Cafe Gerbois

Edouard Manet . In the cafe "Gerbois". National Gallery of Art . Washington

Cafe Gerbois ( fr. Café Guerbois ) - a cafe in Montmartre , a famous meeting place for French bohemians in the late XIX century.

The cafe was located on Granre de Batignolles 11 (subsequently Avenue de Clichy ) in the Batignolles quarter of Paris.

"Over a glass of beer." 1873. Art Museum . Philadelphia

Edouard Manet, at the head of a group of admirers and friends, arranged lively discussions in cafes, usually on Sundays and Thursdays. Emil Zola , Frederic Bazil , Louis-Edmond Duranti , Henri Fantin-Latour , Edgar Degas , Claude Monet , Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley were the regulars of these evenings. Sometimes they were joined by Paul Cezanne and Camille Pizarro . Many of the members of the group were impressionists . This group is sometimes called the Batinyol group . One February evening in 1870 , a dispute between Manet and Duranti ended in a duel in which Duranti was wounded. The wound was not serious and, despite the hassle, both remained friends.

In 1869 , Manet created a sketch with a scene in a cafe. In 1873 he wrote the painting "Beer Mug", which depicts lithographer Emil Bello in the cafe "Gerbois". By 1876 , artists moved to New Athens , and Cafe Gerbois went out of fashion. Today the cafe does not exist.

Emil Zola described the cafe “Gerbois” in his novel “Creativity” (1886), where it appears under the name “Bodeken,” but according to art historian Jean-Paul Crespel, his description in the novel by Duranty “Double Life of Louis Seguin” can be considered more accurate. , where the cafe is characterized as follows: “Shame on those,” Duranti wrote, “who speaks poorly of the cafe, the cafe of Barbois, a place truly amazing and premium, where you always meet strange and interesting faces ...”