Flowers and Fruit

A woodland landscape by a river bank with a still life of ferns and pink and white flowers and a basket of rasberries on a rock at the lower right. Jean Baptiste Robie (1821-1910) was a Belgian artist who primarily painted flower and fruit still lifes and game-pieces in the tradition of 17th century Dutch still life paintings but with a new, brighter colour palette and a softer, more Romantic, 19th century aspect. Robie appears to have carefully constructed each of his compositions which include emphatic verticals, visible here in the prominent tree-trunks, and assigned each a particular colour palette, here the work is dominated by whites, pinks and reds against grey/green landscape background. Another signed and dated still life by Robie is in the V&A collection (1044-1886) which reveals a similar compositional construction and attention to light effects but is executed in a palette of warm creamy-whites and purples.