Still Life with Fruit (1873): Art, History and Details

Still Life with Fruit (1873) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Emilie Preyer (German, 1849–1930).

The work and its context

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

This composition contains many elements that show Preyer's technical abilities. She convincingly rendered the various textures juxtaposed in this composition, such as the contrast between the white cloth and the polished marble table, and the reflecting surfaces of metal, water drops, and glass versus the delicate skin of peaches and grapes. The knife that appears to project out over the side of the table is an indicator of Preyer's familiarity with the tradition of Dutch still-life painting. After early training with her father, Johann Wilhelm Preyer (1803-1889), Emilie Preyer painted her first still life in 1867. For study purposes, she visited museums in Dresden, Antwerp, and the Netherlands. She focused primarily on still lifes of fruit.

Object facts

• Title: Still Life with Fruit
• Date: 1873
• Creator attribution: Emilie Preyer (German, 1849–1930)
• Culture: Germany, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Unframed: 35 x 46.5 cm (13 3/4 x 18 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1915.723

Collection credit

Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.

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.