The Melon

c. 1880

Edouard Manet

Artist, French, 1832 - 1883

Edouard Manet

Attributed to

A golden yellow melon painted with thick strokes of straw and butter yellow with touches of camel brown sits at the center of a wooden table with a blue top in this almost square still life painting. The sage-green stem droops over the left side and the whole melon leans slightly to our left. The table fills the lower half of the painting, and its top is painted with visible strokes of marine blue, blue gray, and white. The background is caramel brown painted thinly in areas with a darker shade of brown. The artist signed in lower right, “Manet.”

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

  • Dimensions

    overall: 46.67 × 56.52 cm (18 3/8 × 22 1/4 in.)
    framed: 71.44 × 80.65 × 8.57 cm (28 1/8 × 31 3/4 × 3 3/8 in.)

  • Accession Number

    2014.18.29

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Sold by the artist to M. Pertuiset, Paris; (his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 5 June 1888, no. 3); bought by Isidore Bloch or Hermann Paechter, Berlin. Max Liebermann [1847-1935], Berlin, before 1925; his daughter, Mrs. Kurt Riezler [née Käthe Liebermann, 1885-1952], Berlin and later New York.[1] (Wildenstein and Co., New York); sold 1959 to Paul Mellon [1907-1999], Upperville, Virginia; bequest 1999 to NGA, with life interest to his wife, Rachel Lambert Mellon [1910-2014].
[1] Name mistakenly recorded as Liezler in Paul Jamot and Georges Wildenstein, Manet, 2 vols., Paris, 1932: 1:no. 386.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1884

  • Exposition Manet, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1884, no. 91.[1]

1925

  • Exposition des Impressionnistes, Galerie Paul Cassirer, Berlin, 1925.

1928

  • Ausstelllung Edouard Manet, Galerie Matthiesen, Berlin, 1928, no. 94.

1932

  • Exhibition of French Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1932, no. 464.

1954

  • Vier eeuwen stilleven in Frankrijk, Museum Boymans, Rotterdam, 1954, no. 88.

1966

  • French paintings from the collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon and Mrs. Mellon Bruce, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966, no. 44, repro.

Bibliography

1932

  • Jamot, Paul, and Georges Wildenstein. Manet. 2 vols. Paris, 1932: 1:no. 386, fig. 440.

1954

  • Bloch, Vitale. "Four Centuries of Still Life in France." The Burlington Magazine 96 (September 1954): 289, fig. 28.

1973

  • Janda, Karl-Heinz, and Annegret Janda. "Max Liebermann als Kunstsammler." Forschungen und Berichte 15 (1973): 103-149.

1988

  • Paul, Barbara. "Drei Sammlungen französischer impressionistischer Kunst im kaiserlichen Berlin - Bernstein, Liebermann, Arnhold." _ Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft_ 42 (1988): 17, repro.

1997

  • Natter, G. Tobias, and Julius H. Schoeps, intro. Max Liebermann und die französischen Impressionisten. Published in conjuction with an exhibition at the Jüdisches Museum, Vienna. Düsseldorf, 1997: 216, repro., 241.

Inscriptions

lower right: Manet

Wikidata ID

Q20188862

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