Still Life with a Basket of Apples

Van Gogh's 1885 still life of a basket of apples reflects his systematic engagement with still-life subjects as part of his art education at Nuenen. Apples — round, varied in color, easily arranged — provided him with material for studying both form and the tonal modeling of three-dimensional objects in controlled light. The Dutch still-life tradition reaching back to the seventeenth century was a framework within which he worked, though his approach was characteristically more direct and less refined than the great masters of that tradition. The location of this work is currently unrecorded or private.

The basket of apples is rendered with attention to the individual fruits' rounded forms and their arrangement within the container. Van Gogh's dark Dutch palette gives the composition its characteristic gravity, the apples' various reds and yellows modeled against the dark background. The basket's woven texture is observed with care.