Still Life

In the 1860s Paris was rediscovering Jean-Siméon Chardin, the 18th-century painter of modest kitchen still lifes, and young painters looked hard at how he made pears and copper pots worth a whole canvas. Monet, still in his twenties and often short of money, painted this with Chardin in mind. Pears are piled in a wicker basket lined with vine leaves, with one more pear, black and white grapes and two apples on a white cloth, against a plain brown ground and lit from the left. Where Chardin kept things spare, Monet arranged the fruit to set up rhythms across the table. Still lifes also sold well to Paris dealers at the time, which may be part of the reason he made it. The National Gallery's own text offers a humbler explanation too, that he painted it on the Normandy coast on a day of rain, when he could not work outside.