Still Life with Onions and Herring

Still Life with Onions and Herring belongs to Nonell's remarkable series of kitchen still lifes from 1910, the year before his death. These works apply the same unflinching directness he brought to his figure paintings to humble foodstuffs — the onion and herring being emphatic emblems of working-class Catalan domestic life rather than the luxury fruit of academic convention. The choice of subjects was ideologically freighted: where Chardin had elevated everyday objects with careful attention, Nonell charged them with the social consciousness that defined his figurative work. Now in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, this painting belongs to a group of still lifes produced in a final burst of creative energy as Nonell's health was failing. His technique in these late works reached a new freedom, with paint applied rapidly and with great assurance. The herring, a staple of the Mediterranean poor, recurs across several of these compositions as a signature motif.

Paint is applied with energetic directness, the herring's silvery skin captured with rapid strokes of cool gray and white. Onion skins receive layered ochres and transparent glazes suggesting their papery translucency.