Eugene Petit, Still Life With Peaches And Silver Coffee Pot

Painting, oil on canvas, representing a still life with peaches and a silver coffee pot. Signed lower right Eugene Petit.
At the end of the 19th century, the still life became an equivalent of the representation of a body or a landscape. It no longer expresses the vanity of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. Painting lends itself to plastic research on space, shapes and colors. Eugène Petit's still life is the perfect example where the roundness, velvety texture and flesh of peaches represents a trompe-l'oeil. The composition takes up a table from daily life, a typical scene of 19th century still life.
We could make a second reading of the painting if we compare it to the paintings of the 17th century. The beaded goblet in the background suggests the vulnerability of the human condition, the wine it contains symbolizes the blood of Christ shed for the redemption of mankind. The open silver coffee pot next to it signifies the passing of time, the memory. The peaches in the foreground remind us that we cannot escape the truth.

Charles Chincholle (1843-1902) journalist and writer pays a very fine tribute to the painter in the preface to the catalog of the sale of paintings, produced by the Hotel Drouot in March 1887. There he speaks of the beauty of the painter's works and of “those exquisite fruits that Eugène Petit seemed to have picked”. At number 58 of the catalog, a still life "Peaches and silver coffee pot" of 68x53cm can be compared to our painting.

Eugène Petit, French painter, born in Paris in 1839 was a pupil of Edouard Müller and Dieterle. He exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon of 1863 and obtained a third class medal at the Salon of 1873. He mainly paints genre scenes, still lifes, flowers and fruits. In 1875, he was the teacher of the American painter Henry Woodbridge Parton (1858-1933) His works are present in the museums of Carcassonne, Compiègne, Courtrai, Rouen, Saint-Etienne and London. He died in 1886.

Source: Catalog of Paintings by the late Eugène Petit, flowers, landscapes, decorative paintings and paintings by various artists, Hotel Drouot, Room n°8, March 1, 1887, Gallica BnF and Bénézit.

no frame: 80.5cm x 60cm