Still Life with Herring

Still Life with Herring of 1910, now at the Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer, is another work from Nonell's late sequence of kitchen still lifes painted in the final year of his active production. The herring was a fish of the poor, abundant and cheap, a staple across Mediterranean and Atlantic coastal communities. By choosing it as a subject Nonell continued the project of dignifying marginal life that characterized his figurative paintings — the still life becomes an indirect social statement as well as a formal exercise. In the tradition of Spanish still life painting, stretching back through the stark bodegones of Velázquez and Zurbarán, the fish on a bare surface carries a kind of austere poetic weight. Nonell absorbed this tradition while moving through a Post-Impressionist sensibility shaped by his direct contact with the French avant-garde. The Víctor Balaguer museum in Vilanova i la Geltrú holds several of his works, reflecting regional Catalan pride in his legacy.

The herring's form is captured with decisive strokes suggesting both shape and the cool iridescence of its skin. Paint application is rapid and unhesitating, demonstrating Nonell's mature facility. The restricted palette of silvers, grays, and ochres gives the composition concentrated austerity.