Still Life with a Basket of Peaches and Grapes
Louise Moillon·1636
Historical Context
Louise Moillon painted this still life with a basket of peaches and grapes in 1636, during her peak years as one of the finest still-life painters in France. Moillon was a Huguenot artist working in Paris who specialized in fruit still lifes of remarkable clarity and restraint. She was one of the few female artists of the seventeenth century to achieve commercial success, and her works were collected by Charles I of England and other royal patrons.
Technical Analysis
Moillon's oil on canvas demonstrates her signature style of precise, luminous fruit arranged against a dark background with minimal accessories. The careful observation of each fruit's individual character — the bloom on grapes, the velvety skin of peaches — achieves a quiet monumentality through compositional simplicity.
Provenance
Possibly Charles I, King of England [1600-1649], The Cabinet Room, Whitehall.[1] Private collection, Lausanne, Switzerland; (sale, Christie’s, London, 30 November 1973, no. 47); purchased by Honoré.[2] Private collection, Germany until 1988. (Jean-Claude Serre, Paris); purchased 1989 by Georges De Jonckheere, Brussels and Paris.[3] purchased 2023 by private collection, London; purchased 2024 through (Ben Elwes Fine Art) by NGA. [1] Abraham van der Doort’s 1639 inventory _A Catalogue and Description of King Charles the First's Capital Collection of Pictures, Limnings, Statues, etc_ (MS Ashmole 1514, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford) records a work described as “an other peece of grapes and peach—and vine leaves upon a Stone table . Done by A ffrenchwoeman in ffraunc Called . Lousea Mullon” (folio 156, item no. 3). See Oliver Millar, “Abraham van der Doort’s Catalogue of the Collection of Charles I,” _Walpole Society_ 37 (1960): 160. The catalogue entry for a different painting by Moillon sold by Sotheby’s London on 13 December 1991 (no. 57) indicates Millar thought the description fit that work; however, it does not have the unusual stone ledge specified in the inventory, which makes the NGA painting a more likely match. [2] Later provenance was adapted from the research of Dr. Tom Flynn and from the artist’s catalogue raisonné by Dominique Alsina, _Louyse Moillon: La nature morte au Grand Siècle_, Dijon, 2009. In the 1973 sale the painting is given as "Property of a Gentleman." The name of the buyer is listed as ‘Honoré’ in the Frick Photographic Archive, which was separately confirmed to Dr. Flynn by the London photography firm A. C. Cooper of London. See provenance research report dated 20 November 2023, copy in NGA curatorial files, as well as https://digitalcollections.frick.org. [3] As per emails from 24 November 2024 and 6 June 2025 from the Galerie De Jonckheere. The painting was in De Jonckheere's private collection.
