El almuerzo en el taller

The young man in the straw hat, leaning against the table as if the lunch behind him is already over, is Leon Leenhoff. He was about sixteen when Manet painted this in 1868. His mother, Suzanne, had married Manet five years earlier, and the question of whether Leon was the painter's son or his half-brother was never openly answered in the family. Manet puts him right at the front and lights him carefully, so that whatever the truth was, this boy is plainly the person the picture is about. Around him the story refuses to settle. A helmet and sword lie piled in the bottom left corner, a black cat washes itself, a woman brings a coffee pot, and none of it quite adds up into a single anecdote. For a long time people assumed a painting this deliberate must hide a message. The oysters, the peeled lemon, the dark coat all belong to the tradition of Dutch still life Suzanne's Dutch family would have known.