Still Life with Vegetables, Partridge, and a Jug (1858): Art, History and Details

Still Life with Vegetables, Partridge, and a Jug (1858) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Adolphe-Félix Cals (French, 1810–1880).

The work and its context

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

During the 19th century, a number of painters used common objects (rather than rare or refined objects) to create still lifes that some critics judged as unfit for the drawing room: studies of carrots, cabbages, asparagus, oysters, onions, eggs, and cooking utensils. Often these subjects were chosen for their mealtime associations. The food represented on the table in this painting—a partridge, onions, and cabbage—are the main ingredients for the well-known dish perdrix au chou (partridge with cabbage). Cals, however, was also interested in exploring underlying compositional design principles and studying the shapes of the objects he depicted. Cals lived and worked in and around Paris for most of his life, though in 1871 he moved to Normandy. In 1874 he participated in the first Impressionist exhibition and continued to do so until 1879. Although still lifes were an important part of his production, they were not his specialty. He preferred to work outdoors, in places chosen during his daily strolls. Art critic Edmond About, who was usually not very generous with compliments, characterized Cals as the most sincere and genuine artist he had ever known.

Object facts

• Title: Still Life with Vegetables, Partridge, and a Jug
• Date: 1858
• Creator attribution: Adolphe-Félix Cals (French, 1810–1880)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Unframed: 49.5 x 61 cm (19 1/2 x 24 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1980.242

A detail from the museum

In this painting, Cals even includes the metal pitcher that holds the liquid in which the perdrix au chou (partridge with cabbage) will be cooked.

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.

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.