Roy sees the café as an integral part of the modern city – as much a refuge for those seeking to escape its loneliness as for those fleeing its chaos.In a metropolis whose café culture is having a moment currently, it would seem appropriate that this vibrant and flourishing reality is captured in art as well.Brunch at Khan, a watercolour that zooms in on a corner by the window at an unmistakably Khan Market café, is an apt encapsulation of artist Anupriya Roy’s show ‘Café Decking’, now ongoing at the IIC Annexe.Roy sees the café as an integral part of the modern city – as much a refuge for those seeking to escape its loneliness as for those fleeing its chaos. The painting shows art on the wall and trees outside the window, a laid-out table, but no people. You could imagine in that absence a slice of life in the metropolis. Brunch at Khan“I didn’t start going to cafés with the intention of painting them. They were places for me to people-watch, and over time my sketchbook became a visual diary,” Roy said.Her first café painting was of a space in Aut, a town in the Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh, which Roy titled Aut and About. The original is now lost – but a digital print is part of the 40-work exhibition.Roy said she ventures out about once every week to cafés – her favourite spots are The Grammar Room in Khan Market and Devan’s in Lodhi Colony.Her paintings are portraits of lived spaces that are populated by both people and objects. So, in The Backpack, she focuses on a bag whose owner sits across it having a meal, and The Red Cup invites the viewer to imagine moments around the titular subject.Story continues below this ad The Red CupRoy’s cafés are spaces to pause, even if only for as long as it takes to finish a cup of coffee or a sketch.Cafés and their precursors — taverns, inns, coffeehouses — have a long pedigree as subjects of art, going back to the 17th century Dutch Golden Age of painting.The modern café, though, came to occupy a central space in art only in 19th century French modernism, appearing just as Haussmann’s boulevards were transforming Paris and making café-going a defining feature of the French capital’s gaslit modernity. Laptop AlcoveThe French Impressionists treated cafés not as backdrops but as actual sites of modern life. Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) remains probably the single most analyzed café painting in Western art. Edgar Degas’s L’Absinthe (1876) shows two isolated drinkers at a café table, and is widely read as a meditation on urban loneliness and dissolution.Story continues below this adThe Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh famously chose not to use black in his Café Terrace at Night (1888) because he wanted to capture the warmth of a space illuminated by a “tremendous yellow lantern”.Outside of France, a famous heir to the tradition was the American Edward Hopper, whose Nighthawks (1942) is a late-night diner scene that has been seen as translating the Parisian café-as-isolation theme into American urban alienation.There isn’t a serious Indian fine-art precedent for the café – or dhaba – theme as a site of modern urban sociability. As urban India continues to evolve in new and fascinating ways, this is a gap that more artists such as Roy are likely to explore. Trisha Mukherjee is an Associate Editor at The Indian Express. As a feature journalist with over 12 years of experience in diverse newsrooms -- Press Trust of India, Outlook magazine and The New Indian Express -- she has written on cultural, social and political issues, with a particular focus on art. She has covered several national and international art events, including multiple editions of Art Basel Hong Kong, the Venice Biennale, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Serendipity Arts Festival and the India Art Fair, among others. She attempts to look at contemporary issues ranging from farmers’ protest and women’s rights to climate change and global politics, through the cultural lens. She is an alumna of Calcutta University and Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal. Additionally, she also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Indian Aesthetics from Jnanapravaha, Mumbai. At The Indian Express, her art writing strives to capture the dynamic art industry -- both Indian and global -- with a focus on its new voices, changing institutional models and evolving markets, while continuing coverage of colonial and modern Indian art. ... Read MoreStay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on InstagramTags:New Delhi