Every story about artists and bars eventually needs a morning-after chapter. This is it.

It’s tempting to treat drinking as part of the atmosphere, like bad lighting or loud music. Something incidental. Something that belongs to the room rather than the body. And for a while, it does. Conversations loosen. Arguments sharpen. People stay later than they should. Work gets talked about intensely, if not always made.

But alcohol is not neutral. It never was.

Few things reveal the inner life of artists more than where they choose to eat once they finally have a franc in their pockets. For the Impressionists, dining was never simply sustenance—it was strategy, camaraderie, theater, and the occasional act of defiance. Their restaurants tell the story of their rise: from noisy cafés of argument to polished dining rooms where turbot arrived under silver domes.

New York has always had two art worlds: the one in the studios and the one at the bar. The former produced the work; the latter produced the legends. If Paris had its cafés, New York had its dimly lit rooms with sticky floors, cheap whiskey, and artists who argued, seduced, collapsed, and occasionally painted the bathrooms.

Below is a guided stroll through the great artist bars of New York City — who drank where, who paid, what they ordered, and what survives.