Still life with apples and grapes in a wicker basket on a table

Still Life with Apples and Grapes in a Wicker Basket from 1635 by Leyster is a fruit still life demonstrating her range beyond genre scenes and portraits. Dutch still life painting was a highly developed specialty, and Leyster's entry into the genre shows her competitive ambition. Leyster executed her genre paintings in oil on panel with a direct unelaborated technique that achieves considerable luminosity through warm tonal glazing. After her marriage to Jan Molenaer in 1636 her documented o...

The fruits are rendered with careful attention to their varied surfaces and colors, the wicker basket providing textural contrast in a composition of characteristic Dutch still-life clarity.