Stillleben mit Äpfeln und Krug

Pissarro had just come home from London, where he had sat out the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. He returned to find the house he had rented near Paris wrecked by Prussian soldiers, who had used his canvases as boards across the muddy garden. Years of his own painting were destroyed. In 1872 he settled at Pontoise, north-west of the city, and made this. He hardly ever painted still life. Among the Impressionists that was really Cezanne's and Monet's ground, while Pissarro was the group's landscape man. Here he sets a few apples on a plain cloth against patterned wallpaper and works the light over the fruit in small separate touches. Only one other still life survives by him from that whole year.