Madame Manet nella serra

In 1879 Manet rented a studio in Paris that came with a winter garden — one of those glassed-in conservatories full of palms and exotic plants that fashionable Parisians had lately fallen for, built for quiet talk among the greenery. He painted several pictures there, and this one he never meant to sell. It shows his wife, Suzanne Leenhoff, a Dutch-born pianist he had married years earlier, seated on a bench among the leaves. It was a gift to her. Manet died in 1883, and within a couple of years Suzanne, short of money, had to sell the very painting she'd been given. It passed through several hands before reaching the national collection in Oslo.