Artwork Page for Basket of Plums

Details / Information for Basket of Plums

Basket of Plums

1769

Anne Vallayer-Coster

(French, 1744–1818)
Culture
France, 18th century
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
Unframed: 38 x 46.2 cm (14 15/16 x 18 3/16 in.)
Credit Line
Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1971.47
Public Domain
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Location
216B French and German
Print
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Did You Know?

The artist painted a companion to this work—a plate of peaches and branch of cherries.

Description

During the later part of the 1700s, fruit still lifes were extremely popular, and a basket of plums was a common motif. In Vallayer's painting the details, especially the plums and the basket, emerge from deep shadows. The colors are vivid reds and violets and a sense of immediacy is invoked by the growing moss, the cakes in their crisp papers, and the glass of water with its sparkling highlights and reflections.
A horizontally oriented oil painting with thick brushstrokes depicts a basket of purple plums on our right and rectangular flat light brown cakes wrapped in paper in front of a water glass on our left. One cake, half broken away, leans at a diagonal on the other cake. Piling in three, narrowing rows above the rim of a woven basket, the plums are dark purple with touches of red-pink, with green poking out between the rows.

Basket of Plums

1769

Anne Vallayer-Coster

(French, 1744–1818)
France, 18th century

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