Skip to main content

Still Life with a Fruit Dish

1936
Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963)

This composition compiles many perennial motifs of Georges Braque’s still-life paintings: a fruit dish, a wineglass with faceted stem, a newspaper masthead with a fragment of the publication’s title, a pipe, and fruit on a table. Still Life with a Fruit Dish also exemplifies Braque’s distinctive ornamental and colorful style of the mid-1930s. Consider, for example, the way the toothed leaf in the still life rhymes with similar forms both in the wallpaper-like shards above the table and in the downward-spilling patterned cloth. Following the artist’s longstanding practice, the wood tabletop aligns with the vertical picture surface so that rather than receding behind the picture plane as in an illusionistic work using conventional perspective, the still life seems to hover in a threshold space between two and three dimensions. Braque built the image from the background forward to emphasize its material, tactile, sensual aspects.


Object Details

We are always open to learning more about our collections and updating the website. Does this record contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? Contact us here.

Please note that this particular artwork might not be on view when you visit. Don’t worry—we have plenty of exhibitions for you to explore.