Still Life

Picasso’s second exhibition in the French capital was held in April 1902 at the gallery owned by Berthe Weill, an art dealer who had an eye for discovering young talents and promoting their works. The first picture reproduced in the exhibition catalogue was a "Still Life" that could be identified as this oil painting in the museum collection. In his preface to the catalogue, Adrien Farge affirmed, «Sometimes, letting himself be carried away by colour, he offers us a luxurious still life».
The bright colours and thick vibrant brushstrokes that characterised the works Picasso hung at Vollard’s in June 1901 are repeated here, although this canvas also conveys his first reflections on the still lifes painted by Cézanne, whose works he had had occasion to behold at the ‘Centennale’ section of the Parisian Exposition Universelle of 1900 and during his visits to Vollard’s gallery. In order to highlight the volume and material substance of the objects depicted, Picasso used contrasting textures, shaping the jug, vase and fruit bowls with vibrant impastos and turning to subtle nuances of colour for the glass and the dish of oysters. By duplicating the angle of vision of the fruit bowl and the table surface he managed to achieve a sense of depth without a vanishing point. The thick outline of the objects recalls those in works by Gauguin and Van Gogh that Picasso had also had the chance to admire on his first visit to Paris.
One of the items depicted on the small table, the beer jug, has a markedly biographical intention, for it is decorated with the craft of the Quimper region, hometown of Max Jacob whom Picasso had met when the poet visited his exhibition at Vollard’s.