Still Life

In 1864 Manet was a lightning rod. His Dejeuner sur l'herbe had scandalised Paris the year before, and the two paintings he sent to the Salon of 1864 were picked apart in the press. That same year he turned repeatedly to still life, the quiet arrangement of flowers or fruit on a table, which he treated as the proving ground of a painter. A painter, he once said, could say all he wanted with fruit or flowers. He grew peonies at the family property at Gennevilliers, his favourite flower, and painted them over and over in these months, cutting the blooms at their fullest and setting them against a dark, plain background.