The Blonde with Bare Breasts

By the time Manet painted this in 1878, he was in his mid-forties and his health was starting to fail. The younger painters he had inspired were already calling themselves Impressionists and showing together, though Manet himself never joined their exhibitions. You can see their looseness here anyway. The background is barely there, brushed in wet and quick, and the hat with its red flowers is a few confident strokes. More than a decade before, his Olympia had scandalised Paris by staring the viewer down. This blonde model looks off to the side instead, unbothered, caught mid-thought. Manet worked faster in these late years, partly because standing at the easel for long had become difficult for him.