JANET BISHOP: 

Still lifes are just such an interesting subject for artists. I think one of the things that is so compelling about them is the way that forms like fruit and a bowl and a table offer the opportunity for an exploration of shape and color. If you look closely at the individual fruits in this painting, each one almost looks like an abstract painting ― there’s so many different colors going on ― there’s lots happening. 

This painting is by Mathilde Vollmoeller. Vollmoeller arrived in Paris from Germany in 1906 and she was a student of Matisse’s, but her real influence was Cézanne, and I think you can see that really clearly in this still life with its fruit in the bowl and the shimmering tablecloth on a kind of upturned surface.  

This painting has been in SFMOMA’s collection for many years and for a long time it was misattributed as having been painted by Vollmoeller’s husband, Hans Purrmann. When we were doing research a number of years ago, we discovered that it was actually made by Mathilde Vollmoeller, which was a super exciting discovery. Vollmoeller is not someone who’s particularly well known, but clearly she was a really good painter.