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At that time, with the imperial palace of the Tuileries still intact, society people would flock to the gardens to see and to be seen. A military band would be playing and people would meet there to talk, among them Manet himself, who often went there with his new friend the poet Charles Baudelaire.
Parts of Music in the Tuileries Garden are sketchily painted or indeed left unfinished. The crowd of people is only partly resolved into isolated groups engaged in conversation. People of the art scene would recognise some of those portrayed in the picture: Manet himself, Manet's brother Eugène, the composer Jacques Offenbach, Charles Baudelaire and Théodore Gautier.
In its compositional approach this painting opened up one of the various routes subsequently to be followed by the Impressionists.
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