Self-Portrait

Around 1878, at 46, Manet stood before a mirror and painted himself at full length with nothing in his hands. He left out the brush and palette, the usual props of a painter's self-portrait, and pushed both hands into his pockets. The mirror left a trace you can still find. A man's jacket normally closes right over left, and here the lapels cross the other way, because Manet copied what the glass showed him. The Artizon Museum in Tokyo, which owns the canvas, notes a second detail. By then his left leg had begun to trouble him, an early sign of the illness that would kill him in 1883, and the pose keeps his weight off it. The face is worked closely, down to the ruddy cheeks and the hard stare under a soft skullcap. The jacket and trousers go down in quick, loose strokes. He kept the picture private and showed it only to people close to him.