Still Life with Quince, 1887. Oil on panel. 38 × 46 cm.
Lot 011 · Paintings
Still Life with Quince
Marguerite Delacroix
Year
1887
Medium
Oil on panel
Dimensions
38 × 46 cm
Estimate
NZD 11,000–16,000
A masterwork of restrained observation: three quinces on a stone ledge, their yellow-green skins rendered with a sensitivity to the fall of light that recalls the great Dutch still life painters of the seventeenth century. Delacroix has placed the fruit against a dark ground that throws their forms into relief, and has paid particular attention to the bloom on the skin — that faint, powdery surface that distinguishes the quince from all other fruit. The panel is in its original frame, which appears to be contemporary with the work.
Artist
Marguerite Delacroix
Marguerite Delacroix (1841–1912) was a French painter who trained at the Académie Julian in Paris — one of the few institutions that admitted women — and exhibited at the Salon from 1868 until 1905. Her still lifes, which constitute the majority of her output, are distinguished by their tonal subtlety and their refusal of the decorative excess that characterised much French academic painting of the period. She was largely forgotten after her death but has been the subject of renewed scholarly attention since the 1990s, when several major works entered public collections in France and the United States.