L'Absinthe

L'Absinthe is Edgar Degas's quiet, unsettling image of two people sitting side by side in a Paris café, each lost in their own thoughts. Painted in 1875-1876, it is held by the Musée d'Orsay, where visitors can study its off-centre composition and its many small details up close.

Where to see it

L'Absinthe belongs to the collection of the Musée d'Orsay. Display arrangements can change because of rehangs, conservation work or loans, so check the Musée d'Orsay's official website for current display status before you plan your visit around this painting.

What to look for in person

The woman and her glass

Start with the woman on the left of the pair. A glass of absinthe stands on the table in front of her, yet she makes no move toward it. Her shoulders sag, her arms hang loosely and her gaze settles on nothing in particular. The model was the actress Ellen Andrée, posing for Degas rather than being caught unawares. Notice how little she engages with the man beside her: they share a bench but not a moment, and that distance is much of what gives the scene its solitary mood.

The man looking out of the frame

Her companion is the painter and etcher Marcellin Desboutin. He smokes a pipe and turns his eyes to the right, past the edge of the canvas, as if something outside the picture has caught his attention. Step back to see how the composition is built: the two figures are pushed toward the upper right, while much of the foreground is given over to bare café tabletops that lead your eye in from the lower left. The cropped, off-centre arrangement feels like a passing glance across a room rather than a formal portrait.

Finding the signature

Look closely at the lower left corner. Degas signed the work there, but not on an empty patch of paint: his name is written on the page of a newspaper rolled onto a newspaper holder. It is easy to overlook at first, so give it a slow look. The detail folds the artist's name into the ordinary clutter of the café, which was the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes on Place Pigalle in Paris, the setting Degas chose for this scene of everyday city life.

About the painting

Degas worked on this painting between 1875 and 1876. Around 1875 he jotted down in a notebook a plan to paint "Hélène et Desboutin dans un café", and the finished canvas, roughly 92 cm high and 68 cm wide in oil, shows exactly that kind of encounter. His sitters were friends from his circle: the actress Ellen Andrée and the painter and etcher Marcellin Desboutin. Andrée was not fond of the result; she later said the pair of them looked like a couple of fools.

The picture did not begin life under its famous name. Degas showed it at the second Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1876 as Dans un café, and it only became known as L'Absinthe when it was exhibited in London in 1893.

Its route to the museum passed through several hands. In 1876 Captain Henry Hill of Brighton bought it from the London gallery of the dealer Charles Deschamps. After Hill died, it was auctioned in London in 1892 and bought by the dealer Alexander Reid on behalf of his client Arthur Kay, who sold it to a Paris dealer in April 1893. That same year it entered the collection of Count Isaac de Camondo. On his death in 1911 he bequeathed it to the French state, and in 1986 it was moved to the Musée d'Orsay, where it is recorded under inventory number RF 1984.

When you stand in front of it, take time with the empty spaces as well as the figures. The gaps between the tables, the two sitters and the edges of the canvas are part of what the painting is about.

Key facts

Artist	Edgar Degas
Date	1875
Size	920 × 680 cm
Medium	oil paint, canvas
Collection	Musée d'Orsay

How to visit: Musée d'Orsay

Paris, France · Museum guide

Opening hours	Tue–Wed, Fri–Sun 09:30–18:00 (galleries close at 17:30) Thu 09:30–21:45 (late opening; galleries close at 21:15)
Closed	Every Monday, 1 May and 25 December.
Last entry	17:00 (exhibitions 17:15); Thursdays 21:00
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The museum stays open and all collections and exhibitions remain accessible, but entrances have changed: timed-ticket holders use Entrance 1 (Quay); priority visitors, reseller voucher holders, visitors without tickets and groups use Entrance 2 (Forecourt). Arrive at least 15 minutes before your time slot.

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