In the Conservatory, Manet

The theme of the painting is the depiction of the painter Jules Guillemet and his elegant wife Jeanne Julie Charlotte Besnier de la Pontonerie, a high middle-class couple of the 19th century, owners of a fashion store located during those years on the famous Rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré, number 19. The painting was created in the "Conservatory," south of the Montmartre district, a place Manet used as his studio for nine months between 1878 and 1879.
Manet explores distances in space and colors and the relationships and tensions in a unique way. The husband, positioned behind the bench, approaching her in two spaces very close yet distant, separated by the composition. Only the touching of their fingers with their rings, at the center of the painting, suggests a deeply intimate and marital bond of the couple, to which the casual observer is not invited to share.
Édouard Manet is considered one of the five greatest painters of recent times.