Masked Ball at the Opera

Édouard Manet

Oil on canvas

National Gallery of Art

Painted in spring 1873, Masked Ball at the Opera (Bal masqué à l'opéra) depicts a densely packed crowd at the annual Lenten masked ball held at the Paris Opera house on the rue Le Peletier. Top-hatted gentlemen in black tailcoats mingle with masked women in colorful costumes, while a court jester is cropped at the left edge and a red-booted leg dangles from the mezzanine railing above — details that convey the spectacle and risqué energy of the evening. Manet sketched the scene on location but completed the painting in his studio on the rue d'Amsterdam, posing friends — including composer Emmanuel Chabrier and art collector Albert Hecht — as models. With its loose, confident brushwork, frieze-like compression of figures, and frank portrayal of Parisian social mixing across class lines, the work stands as a landmark in Manet's lifelong project of painting modern urban life.