Édouard Manet, when painting Nana (1877, Kunsthalle,…

Édouard Manet, when painting Nana (1877, Kunsthalle, Hamburg), is inspired by the character of a woman of the demimonde whom Zola first introduces in his novel L'Assommoir (1877; “The Drunkard”); in this same year, he paints The Plum [Plum Brandy] (c. 1877, National Gallery of Art, Washington) one of his major works, in which a solitary woman rests her elbow on the marble top of a café table.

At the annual Salon, he exhibits Portrait of Faure in the Role of Hamlet, but Nana had been rejected.