Rue Mosnier with Flags Manet French France Art

Édouard Manet (French, 1832 - 1883) The Rue Mosnier with Flags, 1878, Oil on canvas 65.4 x 80 cm (25 3/4 x 31 1/2 in.) The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program. The urban street was a principal subject of Impressionist and Modernist painting; many artists aimed to show not only the transformation and growth of the Industrial Age but how it also affected society. Manet's eyes saw both elegant passengers in hansom cabs and, in the foreground, a worker carrying a ladder. The hunched amputee on crutches, perhaps a war veteran or beggar, passes by fenced-in debris left from the construction of a new train track. Manet's sensitivity to the associated costs and sacrifices tempered his optimistic view of national pride and newfound prosperity.