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Manet depicted an itinerant singer in fashionable contemporary dress leaving a cabaret by night, tightly holding a guitar and eating cherries. Victorine is depicted as a blonde, sharp, and plain young woman well known around the Pantheon Mountains. The features of her face are painted more sharply and slimmer than in other paintings. Her forehead is hidden behind her hat which she wears low on her head. Her nose is defined by deep shadows that form a parentheses shape on either side. Additionally, it appears that Spanish painter Velázquez inspired Manet in many ways here, especially in the use of color. Manet emphasized the features of Victorine by using a limited palette. Her chin and cheek are barely visible as they were covered by her right hand. Her upper lip is nearly invisible as it is partly covered by the two little ruby cherries on her ring finger and little finger. According to art historian Stéphane Guégan, the cherries were added as an afterthought. Art historian George Mauner says the woman's confrontational stare and her awkward grasp of the cherries and the guitar, "which seems almost too bulky for her to manage comfortably" produces a self-conscious effect that is unexpected in a genre painting.
genre