A Bundle of Asparagus

[2] The bunch of asparagus lies on a base of green leaves that reach from the left side to the lower right corner of the picture.

Manet's biographer Théodore Duret speaks of a "lit d'herbes vertes" (bed of green leaves).

The upper half of the picture is occupied by a black-brown background in which "the colors are velvety intertwined", as the author Gotthard Jedlicka states.

[5] The museum director Gert von der Osten emphasizes that Manet's still life was "painted quite openly impressionist with ingenious accuracy".

[2] Manet's style of painting in this picture was examined in detail by employees of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud in Cologne in 2008 on the occasion of the exhibition Impressionism: How the light came to the canvas.

When viewing the work in transmitted light, in which the painting is illuminated from behind, it could be proven that Manet applied the brown color of the background thinly to the gray primed canvas in an “old masterly” manner.