Young Boy Peeling a Pear

The boy absorbed in peeling a pear is Léon Leenhoff, the son of Manet's wife Suzanne, and a child Manet painted many times over the years. In 1868 he set him at this simple household task, the kind of quiet kitchen scene Dutch and Spanish painters had loved two centuries earlier, and dressed it in his own broad, modern brushwork. There is no drama, just a boy, a knife, a pear and total concentration. The painting later travelled north in an unexpected way. The Swedish artist Anders Zorn bought it in Paris and gave it to the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm in 1896, where it became the museum's first work by anyone from the Impressionist circle.