Artwork story
About Still Life with Flowers and Fruit
The artist and artwork
Henri Fantin-Latour painted Still Life with Flowers and Fruit in 1866 in oil on canvas. The French artist trained with his father, a portrait painter, attended the Petite École de Dessin, and copied earlier masters at the Louvre. This is one of four still lifes commissioned by Michael Spartali, a Greek businessman and diplomat living in London. Fantin worked on them from March through September 1866; one appeared at that year’s Paris Salon. The Met calls the group his first major still-life achievements, pursuing serious Realism inspired by Chardin and Courbet.
The world around it
The picture belongs to Napoleon III’s Second Empire, when French Realism challenged idealized academic subjects through direct observation. The official Salon still controlled crucial exposure, even after Courbet’s independent Pavilion of Realism and artists around Manet pressed against its authority. Fantin joined the younger generation attracted to Courbet, but made flowers, fruit, basketry, glass, and a kitchen knife carry modern ambition without political spectacle. Spartali’s London commission reveals a cross-Channel market before British collectors became central to Fantin’s career.
A detail to notice
A broad gray-blue wall leaves air around the arrangement, while the reddish tabletop anchors two unequal towers: a dark glass vase of white and pink blossoms at right and a wicker basket of yellow pears and red apples at left. Fruit spills forward, a green pear, small apple, large yellow fruit, and cut pear whose pale interior carries a tiny dark fly. A slender knife points inward from the lower-left corner toward that cut surface. The signed date Fantin. 1866 sits high at upper left, far from the objects. Age cracks, brush marks, and the worn canvas perimeter remain visible. Soft petals, glossy skins, coarse wicker, reflective glass, metal, wood, and fruit flesh turn a modest meal and bouquet into a test of how oil paint can describe touch.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is painting made in Oil on canvas and held in the European Paintings department.
Recorded dimensions include 28 3/4 x 23 5/8 in. (73 x 60 cm).
Subject terms include Fruit, Flowers, Still Life, and Vases. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Bernhard Gift, by exchange, 1980.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-24.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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