Lillà bianchi in un vaso di vetro

By 1882 Édouard Manet was very ill. The disease that would kill him the next spring had wrecked his legs and left him unable to stand at an easel for long, and the large provocative canvases of his youth were behind him. In his last year or two he turned to small quiet things. Friends came to visit and brought bouquets, and again and again he painted them, roses, peonies, and lilacs like these, set in a plain glass of water. He restaged the same cut branches in different arrangements, chasing the light caught in the petals and the way the stems refract through the water. Manet died in April 1883, at 51, and this handful of flowers is among the last work he made.