In a Cafe (L’Absinthe)

A woman sits with a glass of absinthe in front of her, slumped and unfocused, beside a man who looks away out of the frame entirely. Degas pushes them both to the upper right and fills the foreground with empty marble tables. Shown in London in 1893, it was denounced as a lesson in degradation; the sitters were a well-known actress and an engraver.