Jar, Cup and Fruit

In the autumn of 1889 Bernard, then 21, went back to his parents' house at Asnières outside Paris and took paid work as a textile designer in Lille, the city where he was born. That same summer he had published his first piece of art criticism, in the review Le Moderniste on 27 July. A canvas like this one sits underneath all of that activity, a jug, a cup and some fruit arranged on a table, about 46 by 61 centimetres. The Dutch title the museum uses calls the vessel a kan, a plain household water jug, which is a good deal more ordinary than the English word jar suggests.