The Lemon

By 1880 Manet was seriously ill. The disease that would kill him three years later was attacking his nervous system and his legs, and big, ambitious canvases were becoming impossible. So he worked small. This lemon is barely larger than a postcard, a single bright fruit on a dark plate, laid down in an afternoon with a few loaded strokes. The idea behind it is old and Spanish, the humble object made to glow against the shadows. In these last years Manet painted many such things, single lemons, a bundle of asparagus, a rose in a glass, and often handed them to the friends who came to sit with the ailing man.