The Salvation Army. Miss Booth visiting a Paris Tavern.

This 1886 painting depicts Miss Booth — likely Catherine Booth, daughter of Salvation Army founder William Booth — visiting a Paris tavern, capturing a moment of social reform encounter between evangelical missionary zeal and working-class urban life. The Salvation Army was then a new and controversial organization, having spread from England to France in the 1880s, and its female officers visiting low establishments represented a provocative, photogenic social reality that attracted press attention and artistic interest. Cederström, working in Paris at this period, would have encountered the Salvation Army's street presence directly. The Gothenburg Museum of Art's holding of this work suggests Swedish collectors recognized its quality and social interest. The contrast between the Salvation Army officer's uniform and the tavern's atmosphere provided Cederström with rich pictorial drama.

Interior tavern scenes demand careful handling of artificial lighting — gas lamps creating warm, localized pools of light against darker corners. Cederström would use this lighting to dramatize the encounter between the figure of Miss Booth and the tavern's regular occupants, using light as a moral as well as physical force.