Primavera

Manet meant this to be the first of four. His friend Antonin Proust had suggested a series of the seasons, each one a fashionable Parisian woman, and Manet began with Spring in 1881. The model is a young actress, Jeanne Demarsy, in a flowered dress and bonnet with a parasol, set against fresh leaves and blue sky, as if she herself were the season. When it went to the Paris Salon of 1882 it was a hit. One critic wrote that she was not a woman but a bouquet, a visual perfume, and after years of scandal at the Salon this was the warm public success Manet had long wanted. It came right at the end. He finished only one more of the seasons, Autumn, and died in 1883.