Frame: 96.5 x 71 x 2 in. (245.11 x 180.34 x 5.08 cm.) Signed in ink, printed title, date and number 5/6 on a gallery label affixed to the reverse of the flush-mount “Every representational image is a ...

“In a Café (The Absinthe Drinker)” by Edgar Degas, 1875-76, and “Plum Brandy” by Édouard Manet, 1877. Musée d'Orsay/National Gallery of Art, Washington ...

The Houston show, on view through Jan. 16, includes many breathtaking works — “In a café (The Absinthe Drinker),” in which a boozy, stoned woman floats as surely as the legless table tops ...

Edgar Degas's 1876 painting ‘L’Absinthe’ also added to the drink’s myth, while writers including Émile Zola, Arthur Rimbaud, and Oscar Wilde all opined on it in their works.

Absinthe is said to have originated in Switzerland in the late 18th century and by the mid-19th century was showing up as the subject of paintings such as “The Absinthe Drinker” by Edouard ...

EDGAR DEGAS, “LA SAVOISIENNE”” At: Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence. 401-454-6400, www.risdmuseum.org Sebastian Smee can be reached at [email protected].