Strawberry plate

Strawberry Plate belongs to Bonnard's series of single-fruit still lifes in which a plate of strawberries—summer's most intensely flavored and colored fruit—becomes the occasion for pure chromatic study. Strawberries offered an unusually rich red that he could vary through the range from bright scarlet to deep crimson, set against the green of their hulls and the white of the plate. These fruit studies were painted at Grand-Lemps or Le Cannet depending on the season, the fruit growing in his own garden or purchased at the local market. Their small, intimate scale and focused subject matter give them a concentrated quality distinct from his more complex multi-element still lifes.

The plate provides a containing circular form that Bonnard uses to organize the scattered, irregular shapes of the strawberries. Each fruit is rendered individually through a cluster of strokes in varied red tones, with a small light-touched highlight at the point of maximum convexity. The white or cream of the plate reflects the warm red of the fruit, taking on a pinkish tinge in the areas nearest the berries.