Lineage, Ephemerality, & Eternity in a Parisian Café: Plum Brandy & Manet's Muse

Morning musings on the Île-Saint-Louis Photo by Rachael Laporte

“Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.”

~ Charles Baudelaire

It was January, and the morning was bitingly frigid. The kind of cold I love though—crisp and sunny, with plenty of shadows cast by old buildings onto the narrow alleys of Paris. A moment of pause, and I found myself sitting at a corner café on Île-Saint-Louis. Clad in a pretty pink coat and a soft cashmere scarf, I thought to myself that I could sit there forever and be perfectly happy. I ordered a ficelle, a thinner, more petite version of a baguette, and some jam, then waited for it to magically appear on the table. Perched au terrasse, I tried to remember that I actually do enjoy winter’s chill, but I added a hot café crème just the same.

It was early, so there were very few people to fix my gaze upon and study in detail. But that suited me fine. I had plenty of rêveries floating through my mind and was quite happy to imagine myself as a detached and rebellious heroine from a French New Wave film. Consciousness about the ephemerality of this lovely morning broke through my dream state every now and again. So, I breathed in just a little deeper, hoping the scent of the bread and pastries might travel to whatever part of my memory I shared with Proust and his madeleine. 

Months later, back in New York, the enchantment of that solitary morning had all but faded…until I remembered her, Manet’s painting of a young woman in Plum Brandy.

Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Plum Brandy, 1877. Oil on canvas. Public domain.

The woman is Ellen Andrée (1856-1933), an actress and artists’ muse, conjured into being by Edouard Manet (1832-1883). The canvas is undated but thought to have been produced around 1877, just a year or two after Edgar Degas (1834-1917) famously immortalized Andrée in the despondent café scene of L’Absinthe (1875-76). Downtrodden, hopeless—the shadows on the wall have more life than our muse under the dubious charms of la fée verte.

Edgar Degas (1834-1917), L'Absinthe, 1875-76. Oil on canvas. Public domain.

Plum Brandy is less melancholic, gentler. The softer palette feels more ambiguous, more interior, more private—closer to an abstraction of my own experience. Manet's subject is fair, with a rosy complexion that echoes the pale baby pink of her dress. Her black hat, wound in white lace, sits like a crown atop her gingery locks. She is seated on a dark red banquette in a wood-paneled café. Her cheek rests gently upon her right hand; an unlit cigarette in her left, drawing our attention to a small glass that holds a plum. Her gaze drifts slightly leftward. Is she waiting? Is she bored? Is she lost in a daydream, as I was? We don’t know. Her fingers bend back toward herself, protectively, and her arm hugs her glass as if guarding a private moment. Our vantage point feels close, as if seated at a neighboring table, yet the woman is still and withdrawn. She neither notices us nor extends an invitation.

There is one detail in Plum Brandy that haunts me: Manet’s signature. It is not tucked-away in a bottom corner, or scrawled beneath the glass. Instead, it’s scratched lightly into the marble tabletop itself. You could miss it. But once you see it, everything changes. Manet is there. Not just as the painter, but as a presence. The boundary between artist and observer collapses. There is something both daring and tender about that choice. To sign the table is to claim a seat at it. But here, it is more like he leaned in quietly, made his mark, and then moved on, leaving the woman to her thoughts and dreaming. It is a subtle assertion: this is mine too…this moment, this melancholy. It reminds me that even the most seemingly impersonal scenes often carry fingerprints. The artist never truly disappears.

"The artist never truly disappears."

And so I return to my own moment, seated in that café, looking beyond nothing in particular, lost in thought. The photo of me is like Manet’s painting: part staged, part candid. A performance perhaps, but also a small state of sanctuary. Thinking of Ellen Andrée now, I notice how we sit alike, how the light curves around the edges of each table, how the scarf around my neck echoes her neatly-tied bow, and how my café crème stood in for her brandy. Of course, it is not the same. She was painted into stillness nearly 150 years before I was caught by a shutter. But both images speak in the quiet language of Parisian cafés, where women have long sat to think, wait, smoke, write, disappear, dream. In both frames, time seems suspended and the same unanswerable questions remain: Are we waiting? Are we bored? Are we lost in a daydream? Who’s to say…

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90), Café Table with Absinthe, 1887. Oil on canvas. Public domain.

In the end, my photo is like a soft echo. A gesture toward a lineage of women in cafés, each wondering who they are, who loves them, and if they might be remembered when they're gone. And maybe that’s the lasting spell—that in small, unassuming moments, surrounded by cold air and the scent of baguettes, we become both witness and muse, both ephemeral and eternal. 

Stop by anytime, your table's waiting...