The Brioche
Artist: Edouard Manet (French, 1832–1883)
Original Dimensions: 25 5/8" x 31 7/8"
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
About Artwork: (1870) "Manet reportedly called still life the "touchstone of the painter." From 1862 to 1870 he executed several large-scale tabletop scenes of fish and fruit, of which this is the last and most elaborate. It was inspired by the donation to the Louvre of a painting of a brioche by Jean Siméon Chardin, the eighteenth-century French master of still life. Like Chardin, Manet surrounded the buttery bread with things to stimulate the senses—a brilliant white napkin, soft peaches, glistening plums, a polished knife, a bright red box—and, in traditional fashion, topped the brioche with a fragrant flower." - (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

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