Im Wintergarten

By 1879 Manet was already unwell, and the glass conservatory here was borrowed, a garden studio on the Rue d'Amsterdam he used for about nine months because he could no longer easily work outdoors. The couple are real friends of his, the Guillemets, who ran a fashionable clothing shop, and critics were oddly relieved by the picture, calling it surprisingly proper for the man who had scandalised them with Olympia. The tension is quieter than scandal. He sits behind the bench she rests on, their hands and wedding rings close but their eyes not quite meeting, and viewers have argued ever since about what passes between them. When Berlin's national gallery bought it in 1896, it became the first painting by Manet ever acquired by any museum anywhere.