Still Life with Flowers and Fruit

This is one of four still lifes commissioned from the artist by Michael Spartali, a Greek businessman and diplomat who lived in London. Fantin worked on these canvases from March through September 1866, exhibiting one of them at the Paris Salon the same year (now National Gallery of Art, Washington). Among Fantin’s first major achievements as a still life painter, the present work reflects his aspiration to create serious and complex compositions in a realist style inspired by Chardin and Courbet.