Pictured is Willard Leroy Metcalf's The Ten-Cent Breakfast (Denver Art Museum), painted in 1887 when Metcalf was hanging out in Giverny with various other American artists. Metcalf would later return to the States to become part of The Ten American Impressionists and to otherwise lead a professionally productive yet occasionally personally troubled life.
Metcalf was a tall, strapping guy with an individualist streak; he had marital and financial problems every now and then and sometimes drank too much, but he nonetheless always seemed to be working and painting and focused on his art. In this breakfast club scene, Metcalf's Giverny companions at the time are included, namely author Robert Louis Stevenson and fellow artists Theodore Robinson and John Twachtman. (The standing man with the pipe is apparently unknown.) I read Elizabeth De Veer's splendid biography of Metcalf a few years ago, however, and while I'm not 100 or even 10 percent sure of my recollection, I thought she suggested that the man at the table watching Stevenson read the newspaper is Metcalf himself and not Twachtman. And that Metcalf's less than welcoming stare came from his dislike of Stevenson, which began as a gut feeling and intensified with circumstances that followed. Again, this is my total unsubstantiated recollection from the bio (Sunlight and Shadow), which unfortunately I don't own a copy of and which actually had to be brought in on interlibrary loan to the Chicago Public Library. No matter what the case, it's still an intriguing painting -- especially on 10-10-10.
