Market Scene with a Pick-pocket

Private collection

genre

In French painting, the 1630s saw the development of the one unexpected genius of the period, Louise Moillon. Her long career was spent entirely in Paris, and enough of her work survives to justify her being placed among the greatest of all still-life painters. Inevitably this claim will be challenged by those who do not accept that genius can exist outside the grand manner of painting but, in the context of the art of depicting fruit and vegetables, Moillon had few superiors.

About the Artist

Louise Moillon

1610 – 1696

The greatest still-life painter of the French seventeenth century. She spent her long career in Paris, specializing specifically in still-life pictures with the occasional figure. She came from a strictly Calvinist family. In 1640 she married the wealthy timber merchant Etienne Girardot de Chancourt, also a Huguenot. Her technique was extremely refined, and this led, in later centuries, to the confusion of her work with Dutch, Flemish and even German painters. Since four still-life pictures at Grenoble, once given to Moillon, have been reattributed to the Flemish artist Osias Beert, Moillon's art has been redefined. Her best pictures have a stillness combined with acute powers of observation, notably of the texture of exotic fruit, which have never been surpassed.

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