A Letter to Eugène Maus, Decorated with Two Apples

Édouard Manet

Pen and ink, brush and watercolor on thin wove paper

Musée d'Orsay

Created on August 2, 1880, this intimate work is a handwritten letter on thin wove paper, embellished at the top with two yellow-green apples rendered in brush and watercolor. Manet produced it during his summer stay in Bellevue, where, convalescing from illness, he took to decorating personal correspondence with small still-life sketches of fruit and flowers from his garden. Addressed to Eugène Maus, a fellow painter who had exhibited at the 1880 Paris Salon, the letter reflects Manet's mastery of spontaneous, economical observation — here applied to the most modest and private of formats. These illustrated letters are now among the most prized works of his late career, prized precisely for their unguarded intimacy and the freshness of their watercolor technique.