The Plum (French: La Prune) - also known as Plum Brandy - is an oil-on-canvas painting by ?douard Manet. It is undated but thought to have been painted about 1877. The painting is a study in loneliness, depicting a quiet, almost melancholy, scene of a young working girl seated in a caf?. The subject is viewed from nearby, perhaps by another seated customer. She may be a prostitute waiting for a client, or possibly a shop worker hoping for some conversation. On the table is a plum soaked in brandy, a speciality of Parisian caf?s at the time. Manet may have based the painting on observations at the Caf? de la Nouvelle Ath?nes on the Place Pigalle in Paris. However, the background - the decorative grille and its gold frame - does not match other depictions of the caf?, and suggests the painting was made in Manetˇs studio. The model is the actress Ellen Andr?e, who was also depicted with Marcellin Desboutin in the similar 1876 painting L'Absinthe (or In a Caf?) by Edgar Degas. The similarities between the two paintings suggest that Manet's The Plum may be a response to Degas's L'Absinthe. Degas's painting shows a bleak scene of despair blunted by absinthe; Manet's is a more hopeful scene, where there is the chance that the sitter's loneliness may be broken.