Stilleben, Vase mit Pfingstrosen

The spring of 1864 was a bad one for Manet. The Salon accepted two of his paintings and the critics went at both of them, and he later cut one up and kept only fragments. That same spring he began a run of six canvases of peonies, painted from flowers he grew himself at Gennevilliers, just outside Paris. This is the formal one of the group, a loaded vase on a footed stand, while others in the set show cut stems lying next to the gardener's shears. The collector Etienne Moreau-Nelaton, who had gathered a great deal of Manet, gave it to the French state in 1906. Van Gogh singled this picture out for praise, for its colour and the softness of the handling.