Fruit Displayed on a Stand

Displayed at the 1882 Impressionist exhibition, Fruit Displayed on a Stand belongs to a short series Caillebotte devoted to market vendors' stalls along the Paris streets he knew intimately. The steep, vertiginous viewing angle — looking almost straight down onto the fruit — is characteristic of the compositional audacity that distinguished Caillebotte from his contemporaries. Where Chardin arranged fruit in tranquil symmetry, Caillebotte treats the stand as a field of colour glimpsed in passing, reflecting the hurried perceptual experience of the modern city. Now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the painting remains one of the most formally daring still lifes of the era.

The extreme high viewpoint compresses the picture plane, eliminating any conventional recession into space. Caillebotte applies pigment in short, descriptive strokes that distinguish the fuzzy skin of peaches from the smooth globes of plums, building tactile variety across a deliberately flattened surface.