from WSJ:
Still more comforting, even reassuring, are the floral still lifes that Édouard Manet painted in the weeks immediately preceding his death in 1883. Manet, who was dying of syphilis, was racked with pain so excruciating that he had to sit in a chair to paint these 16 gem-like studies of bouquets in glass vases. Yet "Vase of White Lilacs and Roses," which now hangs in the Dallas Museum of Art, bursts forth from the canvas with a quiet élan that speaks of the prospect of final renewal under the aspect of eternity. Perhaps it is not quite right to call "Vase of White Lilacs and Roses" hopeful, but in me, at any rate, it inspires something not altogether unlike hope.
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