Still Life with Dead Birds and a Basket of Oysters (c. 1860–80): Art, History and Details

Still Life with Dead Birds and a Basket of Oysters (c. 1860–80) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Germain Ribot (French, 1845–1893).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Against a dark brown background, Ribot painted a basket filled with oysters. Light coming from the left is gently cast over the wicker basket. A dead magpie, with its white chest and long black beak, emerges from the shadows at the left. This bird, along with the partridge in the foreground, the jay toward the back, and what appears to be a sparrow at the right, are probably located in a kitchen, where preparations for cooking will soon begin. Germain Ribot, who painted genre (everyday life) scenes and still lifes, was the son of the more famous Théodule-Augustin Ribot (1823-1891), known for his working-class and peasant subjects.

Object facts

• Title: Still Life with Dead Birds and a Basket of Oysters
• Date: c. 1860–80
• Creator attribution: Germain Ribot (French, 1845–1893)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Unframed: 46 x 55.3 cm (18 1/8 x 21 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1980.281

Collection credit

Bequest of Noah L. Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163–219.
• Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.
• Delapierre, Emmanuelle. "Dans la Cuisine de Ribot: le Realisme de l'Objet." In Théodule Ribot, 1823-1891: Une Délicieuse Obscurité. Emmanuelle Delapierre, Luc Georget, Gabriel Weisberg, eds., 58-117. Paris: LienArt, 2021.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.