Still Life with Teapot, Cup and Fruit

By 1890 Bernard's parents had stopped his allowance. He was 22, he had refused the business career they wanted for him, and that year he raised money by putting his own paintings into a lottery. This canvas belongs to the same year and was made at Pont-Aven in Brittany, a small picture, 39 by 47 centimetres, with a teapot, a cup and a little fruit set out on a table. Nothing in it had to be hired, borrowed or travelled to. It stayed in private hands for the next hundred years and reached Amsterdam only at the end of 1989, in a group of Bernards given to the museum by Elin and Bengt Ekström of Uppsala in Sweden.