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Still Life: Flowers and Fruit

Roses in a Vase

Roses in a Vase

A Basket of Flowers

Four flowers and greenery create a loose bouquet in a clear glass in this vertical still life, which is painted with visible brushstrokes throughout. The glass has a tall, narrow, rounded bowl on a flaring foot like a drinking glass. One fully open, light pink peony bloom bows over the edge of the glass to our left. A pink bud stands upright in the glass. Two other oblong flowers, perhaps closed tulips, angle to the left. One is smoky purple, and the other is cream-white edged with brick red. One pink petal lies on the tabletop, which is painted with broad strokes of ash and earth brown. Canvas is visible along the bottom edge and in the lower corners. The background behind the flowers is painted with dashes and long strokes.

This painting dates from the later part of Martin Johnson Heade’s long, varied, and peripatetic career. After traveling through the United States, to England and continental Europe, and three different times to Brazil, Heade settled in Saint Augustine, Florida, at the age of 64. There he began painting detailed arrangements of native flowers, including the Cherokee rose, orange blossom, and, as in this work, magnolia.

Insects and Flowers, Ming dynasty, 14th-15th century, color on silk, Tokyo National Museum

This painting features two large yellow pears in the center, surrounded by clusters of purple and green grapes cascading down from a gilded teal dish on the right. Next to the pears are two pink peaches, with walnuts and green figs in front of them. In the background on the left, there is a decorative blue vase with gold filigree, filled with various colorful flowers and green leaves, including a white rose, red flowers, and small pale blue flowers. The arrangement is on a table with a red covering, and the wall behind them is dark brown.

The Flower Girl

Oleanders

This painting shows various pieces of fruit arranged in a thin white bowl, including apples, peaches, green and purple grapes, cherries, pears, and plums. Some of the fruit is overflowing from the bowl, and rests on the white surface below, surrounding the bowl. Many of the pieces of fruit have thin stems attached to them, and some have thick green leaves. Behind the fruit, the background is dark brown, and there is a tan arched border around the painting.

Still Life with Roses and Fruit

Still Life with Flowers and Fruit

In this painting, a large half watermelon with vibrant red flesh and black seeds sits at the center of a white plate with a silver knife on top of it. Surrounding it on the long wooden table are various fruits, such as a yellow pineapple, red and green grapes, dark red plums, pink peaches, and a partially peeled orange. Below the table are some pumpkins or squash, as well as what could be figs or radishes. A yellow-and-black bird is perched on the handle of a yellow basket of mixed fruit placed behind the watermelon. Around the basket are white and pink flowers. In the background, on the left of the painting, a window reveals a scenic landscape featuring a winding river cutting through a green valley and dark, tree-filled hills below a light blue sky with faint pink clouds. The wall behind the table is a plain gray color.

Still Life with a Glass and Oysters

Vase of Flowers with Grasshopper, Marine Life, and Garden Rock

Still Life: Balsam Apple and Vegetables

This painting shows a bowl of red raspberries resting on a surface. The bowl is pale blue with blue details on the rim, and it is surrounded by a pile of pale peaches and pears, red plums, and green and purple grapes. In the bottom left corner, there are some pale purple-and-white carrots and a small group of red berries. On the right is a tree with yellow pears and a small vase with red and white roses. On the left is a thin brown branch with a bird perched on it. The bird has a green back and a yellow chest, and it is leaning down towards the raspberries, its wings flared and its beak partially open. The surface these items rest on is dark gray and the background is a gradient of pale yellow on the left and light blue on the right.

Cat at Play

Twigs of a magnolia tree with light green, glossy leaves and three cream-white blossoms lie on a sapphire-blue cloth in this horizontal still life painting. Brightly lit from our left, the blossoms and leaves nearly fill the composition, and the cut ends lie on the fabric to our right. The blue fabric cascades from the upper left and across the table or ledge. The three flowers are in various stages of bloom. The tightest bud is to our left, overlapped by a stem and the tender, unfurling leaves of a branch. The blossom next to it, at the center, is starting to open. The petals of the third blossom, to our right, splay open around the flower’s oval-shaped stamen. Light glints off the waxy leaves surrounding the flowers. The tawny-brown underside of one leaf is visible where it turns over, near the cut ends of the branches. Light shimmering on the fabric darkens from bright blue to our right, to deep royal blue in the shadows to the upper left, suggesting the fabric is velvet. The background is streaked with tan and pine green behind the fabric, and becomes nearly black in the shadows of the upper right corner and along the bottom edge. The artist signed the lower right corner, "MJ. Heade."

Bell-Flower and Dragonfly, from an untitled series of large flowers

Birds and Flowers

Strawberries

Morning Glories and Tree-frog, from an untitled series of Large Flowers

During Raphaelle Peale’s time, still lifes were relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy of painting subjects. Peale, however, ignored their low status and is now acknowledged as America’s first professional still-life painter and leading practitioner. In this particularly fine example, the rhythmic balance of fruit, nuts, and Chinese-export porcelain is enlivened by the diagonal branch of grapes becoming raisins and an orange leaf.

Peahen and hibiscus

A Calling

Summer Flowers

Pomegranates and Other Fruit in a Landscape

The Bathers, Souvenir of the Banks of the Anio River at Tivoli

The work of Carl Blechen, a pivotal ﬁgure in 19th-century German painting, marks a transition from Romanticism to a more realistic view of nature. Inspired in part by his encounter with the Italian landscape and light during a trip he made around 1828 or 1829, Blechen developed a ﬂuid technique that enabled him to capture ﬂeeting atmospheric effects. He often used his landscapes as settings for mysterious ﬁgures, reﬂecting his early contact with Romantic painting and theater.

Margaret Fuller

Vase of Flowers

The Sunlight

Portrait of Dora Wheeler

Flowers and Goldfish

A vase holding mostly white flowers sits on a floral-patterned cloth in this vertical still life painting. The ice-blue vase has a narrow foot, tall, slightly tapering sides, round shoulders, and a long neck flanked by handles. An ivory-white circle at the center could be a flower painted on the body. The flowers the vase holds are all pearl and snow white except for two golden yellow flowers and dark greenery. The cloth on which the vase sits is patterned with muted red and dark yellow flowers with green leaves against parchment white and earth brown. A few brown lines cutting across the bottom left corner of the painting could be the edge of a wooden table. Just behind the flowers, a cloth or curtain patterned with dark yellow, moss green, and spruce blue hangs against a teal-green wall, visible along each side of the composition. The objects are loosely painted and outlined with cobalt blue.

Vase of Flowers

Dame in zinnobergrünem Kleid

Mrs. Nadassy

Child Asleep (The Rosebud)

Mandarin ducks and cotton rose hibiscus

A pale-skinned woman wearing a long, rose-pink gown sits amid a lush landscape in this vertical portrait painting. The woman’s body is angled to our left, but she turns her head to look at us with green eyes under dark brows. She has a long, straight nose, smooth, flushed cheeks, and her carnation-pink lips are closed. Her long, curly, ash-brown hair is loosely pulled back in an emerald-green ribbon, but tendrils floating around her face seem to lift as in a breeze. A ponytail or thick tendril drapes over her far shoulder, almost reaching her waist. The low neckline of her gown is wrapped with translucent, gold cloth, and the elbow-length sleeves are gauzy white. The gown has a pale pink bodice and long, full skirt. Ribbons the same green as the one in her hair wrap around her waist and around the elbow we can see. She crosses her ankles so delicate, high-heeled, charcoal-gray slippers peek out from the bottom hem of her skirt. She sits on a gray boulder, her hands folded in her lap as she holds the ends of her translucent scarf. A tall tree grows along the right edge of the composition to arc up and over with olive-green and harvest-gold leaves. Beyond the woman, the land dips down to our left back into a tree-filled valley. Swipes of slate blue in the distance could be mountains. A short distance from us, to our left, one tree with a narrow, pale green canopy grows up against the sky. Behind that tree, yellow sunlight breaks through light blue, lavender-purple, and silver clouds that fill the rest of the sky. Parts of the scene are loosely painted with swirling, fluttering strokes, especially in the woman’s costume and the trees around her.

Souvenir of an "International Ball" (Portrait of Miss Kathleen Bruce)

The Banker's Table

The Milkmaid

Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses

Still Life

Allegory of Sacred Music

Selbstbildnis

Chrysanthemum and Horsefly, from an untitled series of Large Flowers

Cotton Roses and Sparrow, from an untitled series of Large Flowers

Spring

Pink and Rose

A cloud of canary-yellow flowers with pumpkin-orange centers on tall stems with emerald and pine-green leaves fills the top half of this vertical still life painting. The flowers, vase, the round tabletop on which they sit, and the background are loosely painted with visible brushstrokes of vibrant color. The flowers have long, pointed petals like daisies. The bouquet is rimmed with a ring of verdant leaves near where the stems gather in the narrow neck of the cylindrical, ivory-white vase. The vase might sit on a circular cloth edged with alternating sage-green and plum-purple forms like pompoms, but the loose painting style makes these details difficult to make out. The round tabletop is cropped by left and bottom edges of the canvas. The background behind the bouquet and table is painted with long, vertical brushstrokes in salmon pink, pale turquoise, denim blue, and creamy white. The artist signed and dated the painting in red in the lower right corner: “Claude Monet 1880.”

We look slightly down onto a rocky, natural stone arch next to a cave opening, both perched on a high, grassy cliff in front of a shimmering, aquamarine-blue body of water in this horizontal landscape painting. The arch is situated to our left of center, and the cave beyond the gaping opening extends off the left side of the canvas. In tones of ash and caramel brown, the jagged arch and outcroppings are lit from our left so deep shadows are cast along crevasses to our right. Shadow also sweeps across the emerald-green grass at the base of the arch and cave. A few more serrated rocks poke out of the water like teeth far below, to our right, presumably at the base of the cliff on which we are situated. To our left, the rocky shoreline juts into the water in the distance in front of mauve-purple mountains in the deep distance along the horizon, which comes about halfway up this composition. Tiny in scale, minuscule, triangular white sails dot the waterway. Similarly tiny white birds fly high above the water. Pale, petal-pink and white clouds line the horizon beneath a sky that deepens from light turquoise over the clouds to the same aquamarine blue of the water below.

Das Bittenlernen (Familie Reiter)

Bullfinch and Weeping Cherry (Uso, shidarezakura), from an untitled series of flowers and birds

Still Life with Peaches

Peonies

The Burgomaster

The Merry Family

La Dentellière

The Four Seasons

Adeline Ravoux

Woman at Her Toilette

This painting depicts a woman seated outdoors with a baby in her lap on the left and a young child standing nearby on the right. The woman is sitting on the ground, while the baby is facing the right with their arms outstretched. The baby is partially wrapped in a white cloth. The woman has a serene expression and delicate facial features. She is wearing a green and red robe. The young child on the right is holding a small lamb and has curly blond hair. In the upper left corner of the painting, two cherubic faces peer down from a cloud. The background shows a pastoral setting with trees, shrubs, hills, grass patches, and bunnies near the forest edge, under a cloudy sky.

A woman with pale, smooth skin stands wearing a loosely draped, champagne-peach dress in this vertical portrait painting. Her body faces us but she turns her head to look down and off to our right with brown eyes. She has dark brows, an upturned nose, and her carnation-red lips are closed in a slight smile. Her ash-brown hair is loosely pulled up so it sweeps back from her face, while thick curls cascade down her neck and over her shoulders. Her long sleeved, floor-length dress is tied at her waist with a sage-green sash. Gossamer-white fabric drapes around her upper arms, and she holds the long ends in both hands. Her right elbow, to our left, rests on the high base of columns that rise behind her and off the top edge of the canvas. A rust-red curtain drapes down from the top of the painting, over the columns. To our right, beyond the columns, the landscape opens to a view of trees beneath a blue sky with white puffy clouds.

Bird on a Loquat Tree

Still Life with Herring, Bread, and Cheese

A pale-skinned young girl with blond hair, wearing a blue dress, stands in a garden in this vertical painting. The girl and background are painted with blended strokes, giving the scene and especially the girl a soft look. She faces our right and stands in the middle of the composition. Her shoulder-length cloud of hair is topped with a red bow, and long bangs frame her round face. Under faint brows, her sapphire-blue eyes look to our right. She has a petite nose, and her coral-pink mouth turns up in a slight smile. Her cobalt-blue dress is trimmed with wide, blue-white lace on the neckline, across the bottom hem, and down the front to either side of a row of white buttons. The white edges her petticoats come down to just below her knees, peeking out from under the flaring skirt. She wears white socks over blue ankle boots, which also have a row of white buttons down the side we can see. Her near hand is raised with her index finger hooked in the handle of a green watering can, and she holds two daisies by her side in her other hand. She stands on a path flecked with ivory white, pale purples, greens, and pink that curves up and to her left. A bush with emerald and pine-green leaves dotted with pink blooms fills the lower left corner. Behind her, green grass runs back to meet a profusion of pink, purple, and poppy-red plants and flowers that run along the top edge of the composition. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “Renoir. 76.”

Große Praterlandschaft

Two people, perhaps a woman and man, and a baby sit at a table in a courtyard surrounded by vine-covered walls in this square painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible dabs, dashes, or smudges. The table is to the left of center. The man sits on the far side, to our left, and the woman, who appears to have her brown hair pulled up, sits facing away from us wearing a smoke-gray garment. A child wearing pink and pale blue sits to our right of the woman and seems to raise both arms. The ground is dotted with cream white and fog gray against the brown board on which this was painted. Steps lead up to a building at the back of the courtyard to the left, and the vine-covered wall stretches across the right two-thirds of the background. The artist signed the lower left corner, “E Vuilllard.”

Paulownias and Chrysanthemums

Ungarischer Bauernhof

Italienische Landschaft

Old Souvenirs

Water Lilies

A woman with pale skin, wearing a silvery-gray dress adorned with white ribbons and light pink roses, stands looking out at us with a small, pug dog by her feet in this vertical portrait painting. The woman’s body is angled slightly to our right but she looks at us with dark eyes under faint, arched brows. Her nose is rounded, her cheeks smooth and flushed, and her pale pink lips are closed. Her face is framed in a cloud of nickel-gray hair, and tendrils curl down over her shoulders. She wears a wide-brimmed straw hat with a white ribbon set on the back of her head and slightly off to one side. The bodice of her dress has a low, curving neck. This area is loosely painted to create the impression of layers of lace. A band of intertwined pale pink roses and delicate green leaves borders the outer edge of the lace. The dress has long, tight sleeves with lace at the cuffs and the notably narrow waist is tied with a blush-pink ribbon. The full, silver skirt is picked up to create a row of puffs, like the top of a muffin, around her knees. Bunches of pink roses and white ribbons are nestled into the puffs, and below, the skirt falls in long, vertical pleats to her ankles. She wears white stockings and pointed, petal-pink shoes. In her left arm, on our right, she holds a closed fan loosely at her side, almost lost behind the skirt. She holds a pink carnation with a full bloom and a bud on a long, curving stem in her other hand, by her hip. A caramel-brown pug with a black face, wearing a pink collar lined with three bells, stands facing us with one front paw lifted, to our right of the woman's feet. The landscape is painted in tones of mint and sage green for grass beneath trees enclosing the space the woman stands in, sand brown for the ground, and icy blue for the sky above.

The Windmill

Carmencita

The Siesta

Painting from Flowers and Grasses

Flowers and Grasses

Young Woman with Ibis

Amitabha Triad, Tokyo National Museum

This painting depicts a coastal scene with a perspective from the water. There are dark, billowing gray clouds above the horizon, and the sky is pale orange. Below, large sailboats are on the dark water, as well as some smaller rowboats and a few pieces of driftwood. The water reflects the ships and the colors of the sky. On the left is a low stone building on a bit of green land, and there is a green hill in the distance on the right, covered with houses and small buildings.

Trophy of the Hunt

This painting depicts a green field of cotton plants with white blossoms. Three individuals are seen harvesting the cotton. They appear to be wearing skirts and bonnets and have dark skin, although their faces aren’t detailed. The background includes buildings on the left and green trees against a pale blue sky with hints of grey. The painting utilizes loose, visible brushstrokes. The color scheme is warm and natural, featuring shades of green, brown, and muted tones.

A Maid Asleep

Poppies, from an untitled series of flowers

Four Portraits from the St. Petersburg Album. Painters unknown, borders by Muhammad Sadiq. Top left: Nadir Shah, Iran, ca. 1740. Top right: Adil Shah, Iran, ca. 1748. Bottom left: Unidentified nobleman, Mughal school, 18th century. Bottom right: Unidentified nobleman, Mughal school, 18th century. Art Institute of Chicago 1919.952 recto

Palampore

The year 1907 was a turning point for Sargent; the sought-after portraitist stepped away from his successful portraiture career to pursue plein-air landscape painting. This work, depicting his traveling companions and fellow artists Wilfrid and Jane Emmet de Glehn, captures that moment of transition. Combining landscape and portraiture, the composition speaks to friendship and painterly pursuits while also celebrating color, light, and movement.

Woman before an Aquarium

Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain

Nini in the Garden (Nini Lopez)

Hunting near Hartenfels Castle