Famous Fruit Paintings

Fruit as a subject

A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural or human-made. Fruit is the commonest of all those objects and the oldest: it is cheap, it holds still, it comes in every color, and it goes off, which gives the painter a deadline and the paintings their meaning.

That last point is why a still life of fruit is never only decorative. A pear at its peak and a pear with a bruise say different things, and the whole tradition plays on the gap. A bowl of perfect peaches is abundance. A cut melon with a fly on it is time passing. Painters knew exactly what they were doing, and so did the people who bought the paintings.

Technically it is also the best training exercise in art. A round form with a matte skin, a single sharp highlight and a soft shadow underneath teaches you most of what you need to know about painting light, which is why every student in Europe for four hundred years started here.

Famous fruit paintings

These are the paintings people ask for by name, and each can be ordered as a hand-painted reproduction in oil.

• Basket of Apples by Paul Cezanne, a French Post-Impressionist whose work introduced new modes of representation, influenced the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century and formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and early 20th-century Cubism. The tilted surface and the impossible weave in this picture are where modern painting begins.
• Still life, pitcher and fruit and Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses, two more from the same long argument with a table top.
• Still Life with Lemons on a Plate, a plate of yellow against a colored ground, and about as simple as a picture gets.
• Still Life with Apples, Pears, Lemons and Grapes and Still Life with Mackerels, Lemons and Tomatoes.
• Basket with Peaches and Grapes, Cup of Cherries and Melon and Still Life with Cherries, Strawberries and Gooseberries by Louise Moillon, three French baskets that nobody has improved on.
• Still Life with Apples, a Pear and a Ceramic Portrait Jug by Paul Gauguin, one of the four principal artists of Post-Impressionism along with Cezanne, van Gogh and Georges Seurat.
• Just Dessert and Still Life with Raisin Cake, Fruit and Wine by William Michael Harnett, American realism at close range.
• Fruit, a Nest and Insects in a Wood and Flowers, Fruit, Reptiles, and Insects on the Edge of a Wood by Rachel Ruysch, the forest floor version of the genre.
• The Little Red Bowl, The Big Brass Bowl and Still Life with China Vase, Copper Pot, an Apple and a Bunch of Grapes by William Merritt Chase.
• Still life Plums by Zakar Zakarian and Still-life of Fruit and Birds by Tobias Stranover.
• Natureza morta com frutos e flores by Josefa de Obidos, from the Portuguese branch of the same tradition. Natureza morta means still life in Portuguese..

From Caravaggio to Cezanne

Two artists bracket the whole history of this subject. Caravaggio was an Italian painter active in Rome for a significant portion of his artistic life, and critics have described his work as combining a realistic observation of the human state, physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting that had a formative influence on Baroque painting. That same realism, turned onto a heap of produce, is where the modern version of the genre starts: leaves with holes in them, skin with blemishes, one hard light.

Paul Cezanne closes the argument two and a half centuries later. His work introduced new modes of representation and formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and early 20th-century Cubism, and he did it with a few pieces of fruit on a cloth. The surface tilts, the bowl is seen from one angle and the cloth from another, and the picture stops pretending to be a window. Caravaggio made the thing more real than the thing itself. Cezanne turned it into a shape on a canvas. Everything else in this collection of paintings sits somewhere between those two positions.

Van Gogh and the fruit still life

Vincent van Gogh is the artist most people come to this page for after Cezanne, and his fruit pictures are worth understanding on their own terms. Vincent van Gogh painted these subjects at two very different moments: in Paris in 1887, where the first Sunflowers series was executed, and later in Arles. The earlier group is dark. The later work is flat, bright and built on a single contrast.

Look at the lemons on their dish. There is nothing in that painting except yellow fruit, a plate and a colored ground, and it works entirely because the ground is the wrong color for the subject in exactly the right way. Vincent van Gogh did the same thing with carnations on yellow and with sunflowers on yellow. Those are not still lifes about objects. They are paintings about what one color does to another.

If that is what appeals to you, look for his pictures rather than the Dutch ones, and go a size larger than you first think. The flat areas need room to work.

Styles, centuries and how the genre changed

Four styles cover almost everything on this page, and knowing which one you are looking at makes the choice easier.

The 17th century Dutch and Flemish manner: dark ground, single light from the left, a shelf, extreme finish. These are the most impressive technically and the most demanding of a warm lamp.

The 18th century French manner, which is Chardin's: plainer objects, softer light, no display. This is the style that has aged best and it suits a modern room without any effort.

The 19th century American realist manner, which is Harnett and Chase: even light, hard edges, an almost photographic finish. These tolerate any lighting and are the safest choice if you cannot judge the room.

And the Post-Impressionist manner, which is Cezanne, van Gogh and Gauguin: flat areas, visible brushwork, a table that tips. These are paintings about paint, and they hang alongside modern furniture better than anything else in the genre.

You can find all four styles in this collection, and the differences between them are visible in a single glance across the grid once you know what to look for.

Baskets, bowls and dishes

The container matters more than people expect, and it is a useful way to browse. The woven kind is rustic, horizontal and full: the produce spills, the weave gives the painter a pattern, and the picture reads as plenty. A bowl is formal and vertical and concentrates the light in one place. A shallow dish flattens everything and pushes the subject forward, which is what van Gogh does with his lemons. A bare stone shelf with nothing on it but the produce is the most severe option and the hardest to carry off.

Chase is the artist to watch on this page for containers. The Little Red Bowl, The Big Brass Bowl and the china vase with a copper pot are essentially the same picture with the metal and the ceramic changed, and comparing them tells you more about how a painter thinks than any amount of biography. It is worth doing before you buy..

Which fruit, and what it does in a room

Different produce behaves differently on a wall, and this is worth more thought than the period or the artist.

Apples and pears are the safest fruits, with matte skin and quiet color, and they sit in almost any room. Lemons and oranges are the loudest, since a yellow or an orange at full strength will set the temperature of everything around it; van Gogh knew that, which is why so many of his tables have a lemon on them. Grapes are the most decorative of the fruits, with the light coming through them rather than off them. Peaches are the warmest and the most old-fashioned in the best sense. Cherries and berries are small, bright accents that need a close wall, and they work in a kitchen where nature is already on the counter. Pomegranates, melons and anything cut open give you flesh and seeds and are the most dramatic option of all.

If the room is cool and gray, go for citrus or peaches. If the room is already warm, apples and grapes will settle it rather than shout.

Women artists and the fruit piece

This is one of the few corners of European art where women worked at the top from the start, because it needed no nude model and no academic training in history painting. Louise Moillon in Paris, Rachel Ruysch in Amsterdam with 31 pieces in this catalog, Clara Peeters with her fish and cheese, Josefa de Obidos in Portugal: four of the best names in the field and none of them a household name.

The Moillon baskets in particular are worth opening. They are plain, frontal and absolutely still, with the produce set at eye level against a dark ground, and they have aged better than a great deal of more ambitious painting from the same decades.

Where to find the best of them

A still life painting of fruit is one of the easiest things to search for badly, because the titles are generic and the thumbnails all look alike. Two habits help. Explore by artist rather than by title, since a painter who did one good one usually did twenty. And open the image at full size before deciding, because at thumbnail size a great picture and a dull one are indistinguishable.

The Cezanne group, the van Gogh group and the Chase group are the three most rewarding places to start on this page. Paul Cezanne is the name that changed the genre, and every one of his tables is a variation on the same problem. If you want something found rather than famous, go back through the Moillon and Ruysch pictures instead: they are seventeenth century painting at its best and almost nobody searches for them by name.

Whatever route you take, use the sub-collections rather than scrolling. The catalog is divided by what is in the picture, and three clicks through those divisions will get you further than twenty minutes in the main grid.

What to look for in a reproduction

Three things tell you whether a copy of a fruit picture works. First the skin, which is matte with one small hard highlight; a copyist who makes it glossy has turned it into plastic. Second the shadow underneath, which should be warm and soft on one side and sharp where the object touches the surface. Third the background, which in the older pictures is almost black and has to stay alive rather than going flat; a white ground has the opposite problem and shows every weak edge.

When the approval photo arrives, look at one piece at full zoom and follow the light from the highlight around to the shadow. If that turn is smooth, the whole picture will be right.

How each reproduction is made

One studio artist works from the museum reference in oil, building the ground first, then the mass of the produce, then the highlights last, which is the order these were originally built. Nothing is printed and nothing is transferred. Seven sizes are available with an optional frame, and you approve a photo of the finished work before it ships. Free worldwide shipping and 90-day returns apply. These were small paintings to begin with, so the middle sizes suit them best, and a pair hung together at the same size looks deliberate in a kitchen or a dining room.

Browse related collections

The subject sits inside the wider table-piece tradition.

• The whole still life group for every inanimate subject.
• Vegetables and produce for the kitchen garden.
• Dishes, jugs and glass for the containers themselves.
• Flowers in a vase for the other great sub-genre.
• Fish on the slab for the market and the kitchen.

Frequently asked questions

What is a fruit still life? A work of art depicting mostly inanimate matter, typically commonplace objects, in which the main subject is fruit arranged in a bowl, in a basket or on a shelf. It is the oldest and largest sub-group of the still life genre.

Why did so many painters use apples? Because a round matte object with one highlight is the best available exercise in painting light, and because they keep. Cezanne built a new kind of picture out of them, and the rest of modern painting followed.

Are these prints? No. Each is an original oil on canvas made by hand by a studio artist, in seven sizes, with an optional frame and a photo of the finished work for your approval before it ships.