Basket of Fruit

A peach, a plum, a fig and the glint of a knife handle, each made with a single stroke laid into wet paint. That economy is the whole subject of this small canvas, less than 45 centimetres wide, and it is why the picture has sometimes been called a study. No more finished version is known, and Manet thought it complete enough to hang in the exhibition of his own work that he staged in 1867.

It left his hands for those of Marguerite de Conflans, a young woman he painted several times. She later married and became Madame d'Angély, and in May 1914 she sold the picture to the dealers Durand-Ruel. Their note on the purchase says they bought it from an elderly lady of Paris who had obtained it directly from Manet.