Intérieur de cellier

Antoine Vollon's 'Intérieur de cellier' (Cellar Interior, 1885) is a still-life subject from one of the most prolific and technically accomplished still-life painters of the late nineteenth century — his cellar interiors brought together the objects of wine storage and food preparation with the specific quality of cool, dim cellar light that distinguished this space from the conventional kitchen or dining-room still life setting. Vollon's engagement with the variety of still-life settings — the kitchen, the pantry, the cellar, the market stall — gave his oeuvre a systematic investigation of the still life across different domestic contexts.

Vollon renders the cellar interior with his characteristic paint quality — the thick, lustrous impasto that gives his still lifes their distinctive material presence applied to the specific objects of the cellar (bottles, jugs, barrels, root vegetables) within the cool, indirect light of the underground space. His palette in the cellar subject shifts toward the deeper, more muted tones appropriate to the dim light while maintaining his characteristic chromatic richness in the objects themselves.