The Rue Mosnier Dressed with Flags

The painting is held in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. It was acquired by the institution in 1989 following a sale at Christie's in New York.

Prior to this acquisition, the work passed through several notable private collections. It was owned by Jean-Baptiste Faure during the 1890s and subsequently by Auguste Pellerin until 1910. Later owners included the Hungarian collectors Marcell Nemes and Baron Mór Lipót Herzog.

Before 1932, the piece was sold to the German banker Jakob Goldschmidt. Following Goldschmidt's death in 1955, his estate sold the work in London in 1958 to Paul Mellon, who retained it until the 1989 auction.

Scholars position this work within the broader Impressionist response to the Fête de la Paix on June 30, 1878, contrasting it directly with Claude Monet's contemporaneous depictions of the Rue Montorgueil and Rue Saint-Denis. While Monet's versions convey a jubilant atmosphere, Manet's interpretation is characterized by an austere, almost arid quality that offers a darker vision of summer in Paris. This critical distinction highlights Manet's focus on the shadow sides of progress and prosperity, specifically through the inclusion of a one-legged veteran on crutches, likely wounded in the Franco-Prussian War, who traverses a scene of rubble and construction near the Gare Saint-Lazare.

The painting is historically situated as part of France's recovery following the Paris Commune and the war, serving as a counter-narrative to the official celebration of national renewal. Art historical analysis notes that the composition echoes Manet's other 1878 work, Road-menders in the Rue Mosnier, and suggests a lineage of influence extending to Childe Hassam's 1917 painting The Avenue in the Rain. By juxtaposing festive tricolor flags with the reality of physical disability and urban debris, the work provides a complex commentary on the Third Republic's self-presentation during the Exposition Universelle.

Manet's painting established a compositional and thematic precedent for depicting flag-draped urban streets, directly contrasting with Claude Monet's more jubilant contemporary scenes of the Rue Montorgueil and Rue Saint-Denis on the same 1878 holiday. Unlike Monet's celebratory atmosphere, Manet's austere vision, incorporating a wounded veteran and construction debris, offered a complex, ambiguous reflection on national recovery. These 1878 Parisian street works by Manet and Monet subsequently influenced Childe Hassam's 1917 painting of New York, The Avenue in the Rain.

Within Manet's own output, the canvas echoes the composition of his 1878 Road-menders in the Rue Mosnier, while a similar scene of the decorated street resides in a private collection.

Édouard Manet’s 1878 oil on canvas, titled The Rue Mosnier Dressed with Flags, measures roughly 65 by 80 centimetres. Executed from the artist’s studio window overlooking the street, it records a brief moment when the thoroughfare was festooned with French tricolour banners for a national celebration. The composition captures everyday pedestrians, a ladder‑bearing worker, and a crutch‑using figure against the backdrop of ongoing urban construction.