7 Items in this Learning Collection
Collection Object
Collection Object

Copyright
All Rights Reserved ()

Still Life with Apples (Nature Morte aux Pommes)

Accession Number
1984/1.288

Title
Still Life with Apples (Nature Morte aux Pommes)

Artist(s)
Maurice de Vlaminck

Object Creation Date
1910

Medium & Support
oil on canvas

Dimensions
19 3/4 in x 25 9/16 in (50.1 cm x 64.9 cm);28 1/2 in x 34 3/4 in (72.39 cm x 88.27 cm)

Credit Line
Museum purchase made possible by a gift from Helmut Stern

Label copy
March 28, 2009
Maurice de Vlaminck—a painter, printmaker, draftsman, writer, and musician—is thought to have had no formal training as an artist. He made his living as a bicycle mechanic, a café violinist, and a writer for anarchist newspapers. Vlaminck reveled in his rough-and-tumble roots and his undisciplined lifestyle, and he often ridiculed the pretensions of high culture; he claimed, for example, that he had never visited the Louvre and even demanded that Europe’s most prestigious fine arts academies be burned down. Still Life with Apples, however, contradicts this self-fashioned image of the artist-as-rebel. Here Vlaminck demonstrates himself to be familiar with and accomplished in the leading stylistic developments of early twentieth-century avant-garde painting. The application of paint in little blocks of color and the rendering of objects, which seem to bleed into the surrounding environment as a consequence of open passages, are especially reminiscent of the work of Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, whom Vlaminck greatly admired.

Subject matter
Vlaminck's early Cubist experimentation with representation of space, objects, and perception. One of the earliest examples of the Cubist style incorporating the traditional still life.

Physical Description
A bowl containing apples rests in the center, flanked by two conical drinking cups.

Primary Object Classification
Painting

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.

Keywords
Cubist
apple
bowl
cups
cups (drinking vessels)
fruit bowls
modern and contemporary art
oil painting (technique)
oil paintings (visual works)
still lifes
table

& Author Notes

All Rights Reserved