Three Cent Soup
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
(American, 1834–1903)
Three Cent Soup, ca. 1859
Etching and drypoint
Mrs. F.F. Prentiss Bequest, 1944.77
Whistler presents a typical cheap Parisian restaurant with working-class clients seated on wooden benches. The scene takes place at night. Some of the customers are slumped over from exhaustion, sleeping beneath the illumi-nated gaslight in the center of the ceiling.