Add this to your “Why Art Education Is Important” file:
“You can deduce everything about a woman from the way she holds her feet,” Edouard Manet once said to Stephen Mallarmé. “Seductive women always turn their feet out. Don’t expect to get anywhere with a woman who turns her feet in.”[1]
Which makes this painting — odd perspective issues aside — even more mysterious: What are the prospects of the man chatting to the barmaid?[2]
Sources:
[1] Sue Roe, The Private Lives of the Impressionists (New York: Harper Collins, 2006), p. 103.
[2] More here on Manet’s 1882 A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
I will now be very self-conscious about how I hold my feet…. I guess the only way to go is straight?
The man’s eyes aren’t clearly depicted. Perhaps he’s trying to catch a glimpse of her feet.