When Edgar Degas’s L’Absinthe came up for auction at Christie’s in London in 1892, there were hisses in the saleroom – an incident which tells us at least as much about the sharpening of the British public’s ability to interpret his paintings as it does about late Victorian morals. To an untrained eye, this notorious painting of a slightly slumped and haggard couple sitting in a Parisian café
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