Fruits and Knife

Gauguin's early still lifes from the late 1870s and early 1880s belong to the period when he was still a Sunday painter — a prosperous stockbroker at Bertin's who collected Impressionist paintings and attended exhibitions rather than exhibiting himself. He studied under Pissarro and spent weekends painting in the Pontoise region, absorbing Impressionist technique. These modest still lifes — knife, fruit, simple arrangement — represent the practise phase of a gifted amateur before the 1882 financial crash forced his hand and made him a professional. They show the direct influence of Pissarro's teaching but already display an interest in the clean, frontal presentation of objects.

Short Impressionist strokes build the fruit surfaces with optical colour mixing in the Pissarro manner. The knife is rendered with linear precision as a compositional diagonal. The overall palette is fresh and relatively high-keyed, consistent with outdoor-studio Impressionist practice.