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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The Melon

Edouard Manet (French, 1832 - 1883)

c. 1880

Medium: oil on canvas
Classification: Painting
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.)
Culture: French
Museum: National Gallery of Art, CF
Credit line: Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Rights: Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed

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