Pears

The fruit in a still life was often chosen because it was rare and expensive. Millet painted pears from a country garden, and his reasoning survives in a question the Boston museum quotes. Who would dare to claim, he asked, that a potato is inferior to a pomegranate? Two big pears stand side by side on a bare wooden table, one russet, one dull gold, with a third, still green, half lost in the dark behind them. In front lies a table knife with a pale handle, the blade pointing off toward the left edge. The panel is small, about 18 by 25 centimetres, and it was painted some time in the mid-1860s. It was still in his studio when he died in 1875, and it passed to his widow, Catherine.