Flowers in a Crystal Vase

By 1882 Edouard Manet was very ill. He had trouble walking, was often confined indoors, and had barely more than a year to live. In these last months friends kept bringing him small bouquets, and he painted them, around 16 little flower pieces done quickly and close up, sometimes in a single sitting. This one, clematis and carnations in a clear glass vase, was probably painted that July at Rueil, just outside Paris, where he had taken a house to rest. There is nothing grand about it. A handful of cut stems, water, glass, the light passing through. After a lifetime of large, argued-over pictures that scandalised the Salon, here is Manet working small and fast, at arm's length from the bed. He died the following spring, in April 1883, at 51.