La Sortie du Théâtre

Forain was at the center of the Paris art world in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, producing witty drawings of urban life that would appear in newspapers, journals, and paintings. His sketches for Huysman's Croquis parisiens (1880) capture daily life in the city. He participated in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Impressionist Exhibitions but turned his attention to religious subjects around the turn of the century before continuing to cover the first world war as a correspondent for Le Figaro.
During the 1880s and 90s, Forain, like his colleagues Manet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Daumier, among others, depicted the world of theater and dance behind and on the stage and among the audience in the lobby. As couples exit the theater after a performance, a woman in a cobalt gown with white trim on the arm of her partner turns to the right, calling our attention to a man with a red beard in the shadows whose hand rests on the back of a patterned chair.