The melon

The Melon, painted in 1880, belongs to the series of still-life canvases Manet made during his convalescence at Bellevue, when his deteriorating health forced periods of rest away from Paris. These late still lifes — roses, asparagus, plums, fruit — represent a concentrated final chapter in his career, applying his full pictorial intelligence to intimate subjects that required only a tabletop and a few hours of work. The melon, cut open to reveal its interior, is treated with the same directness Manet brought to his figure paintings, the fruit's flesh and rind rendered with confident brushwork and no concession to decorative prettiness. The National Gallery of Victoria holds this canvas as part of its collection of French nineteenth-century painting.

Manet applied paint in broad, confident strokes with little academic blending, creating flat planes of color that capture the melon's surface and flesh with economical directness. His palette is high-keyed and fresh, the warm orange-yellows of the interior contrasting with the grey-green of the rind, each area handled with a different stroke quality matched to the material being described.