AIMEE BRUNEAUX
19th CENTURY FRENCH SCHOOL
A Lovely large signed oil on canvas by Aimee Bruneaux. Two wicker baskets on a pale stone ledge: the first upright and heaped with black grapes, their bloom-dusted clusters trailing over the rim among broad vine leaves; the second overturned, spilling a cascade of translucent white grapes and downy peaches across the stone, two halved fruit at the right showing their crimson stones. The whole is set against a warm, freely brushed ground of ochre and olive, so that the fruit reads as the only sharply realised passage in the picture. The white grapes are the tour de force — each berry built in a single loaded touch of pale gold and green and lit as though from within — while the peaches are handled with a soft, blooming fullness.
The overturned basket spilling its fruit was among the most beloved formulas of French naturalist still life in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, brought to its height by painters such as Alfred-Arthur Brunel de Neuville. Painted on a scale intended for a dining room or a Salon wall, this is an ambitious and accomplished example of the type, the bravura handling of light through fruit the mark of a thoroughly trained hand.
Title: “Fruits in a Basket"
Signature: Signed lower right
Medium: Oil on original canvas
Size: c. 36 x 29 inches unframed 44 x 37 inches framed
Condition: Very good for age - relined and ready to hang
