Grapes and Walnuts on a Table

Paul Durand-Ruel, the Paris dealer who carried the Impressionists through their leanest years, bought Sisley's pictures by the dozen to sell them on. This one he kept. In 1924 his New York gallery wrote to a Boston buyer that the old man had bought it straight from the painter and held on to it in his private collection for the rest of his life. It was sold in 1925, three years after his death.

It is an odd picture to find in Sisley's hands. He painted landscape almost exclusively, and the museum counts only nine still lifes by him, this one probably made at Monet's suggestion in 1876. A plate of grapes, a scatter of walnuts, a knife and a nutcracker sit on a white cloth. The creases in that cloth are put down in quick strokes of blue and white, so the tabletop spreads out like a snowy field with the fruit set across it.