Nature morte au potiron

Boudin is remembered for beaches and enormous skies, the man who pushed the young Monet to paint outdoors. But in the 1850s, before that reputation formed, he made quiet still lifes like this one and called them his dining-room paintings. He was looking hard at Chardin, the 18th-century master of humble kitchen things, and he sold these modest canvases to collectors around Le Havre to keep himself going. The pumpkin sits in plain light, its cut flesh described without fuss. Boudin was in his early thirties here, still years away from the coast scenes that would make his name.