Art Institute of Chicago

In the Café

Fernand Lungren (American, 1857–1932)

Date

1882–84

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

Paris

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

In 1882 Fernand Lungren traveled to Paris, where he briefly attended classes at the Académie Julian before abandoning formal training in favor of direct observation of the city and its people. Here, a fashionably dressed woman sits alone and alert. Her presence is a sign of modern Paris’s changing social environment, in which café culture offered women new opportunities for leisure in public spaces. Although Lungren employed a dense, hard-edged style, his interest in modern life and the effects of light (here both gas and electric lighting) was nevertheless indebted to French Impressionism.

The authoritative record is held by Art Institute of Chicago. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.