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Still Life Paintings

About this collection

Still life painting is the art of arranged things, flowers, fruit and the objects of a table, a genre the Dutch brought to its height and French painters carried into the 20th century.

Nothing in a still life moves, so everything depends on light. Most of the works here are French still life oil paintings, bouquets in glass vases, stoneware jugs and painted pottery, with fruit set beside a carafe, and nearly all of them are signed and framed.

Still life with a tall carafe and a mass of dark grapes painted in thick impasto, in a lattice-carved gilt frame (Paul Audra)

Paul Audra (1869-1948)

Grapes and a Carafe
$2,300Signed
M. François-Aubert still life of roses in a glass jar and cherries on a garden table, signed oil on canvas in a wide gilt frame

M. François-Aubert

Roses and Cherries
$1,900Signed
Flowers in a turquoise vase against a brown damask wall, signed Simon-Auguste, in a gilt frame

Simon-Auguste (1909-1987)

Flowers in a Turquoise Vase, 1950s
$1,800Signed
Signed still life of violets in a blue vase by Cherubini, 1931 oil on canvas, carved frame

Carlo Cherubini (1897-1978)

Violets in a Blue Vase, 1931
$2,700

Guides · before you buy

Reading the Frame on an Antique PaintingThe frame is half the object.Read the guide
Antique Dutch School floral still life with a rose, morning glories and a butterfly, oil on canvas in a gilt frame

Dutch School, 18th century

Bouquet with a Butterfly, 1700s
$3,800
Wildflowers in a blue and grey stoneware jug with green and red apples on a table, signed oil by Andre Charigny in a carved cream and red bole frame

Andre Charigny (1902-2000)

Flowers in a Blue Jug
$2,800Signed

GalerieClub Fine Art

1,100+

paintings sold since 2017

Poppy Fields, late 1800sSold Poppy Fields, late 1800s Hagar and Ishmael, 1700sSold Hagar and Ishmael, 1700s Penitent Magdalene, 1600sSold Penitent Magdalene, 1600s

Our promise

  • Every painting photographed front and back
  • The frame you see is the frame that ships
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New paintings, by email

A note when new paintings come in. Nothing else.

Elsewhere in the gallery

Still life paintings for sale at GalerieClub

Painters called it the quietest subject. A still life asks for no sitter and no journey, only a table, a vase and a window, and generations of painters used it to practise colour. The works in this collection are still life oil paintings, mostly French and mostly from the 20th century, with an older flower piece from the Low Countries among them.

  • Flowers set the pattern. The Dutch flower piece of the 17th and 18th centuries arranged blooms that never opened in the same season, a glass vase, a butterfly on a petal, and it made the floral still life a genre in its own right. French painters of the 20th century kept the bouquet but loosened it, and a flower painting in a vase or a jug became a study of colour laid down quickly, before the petals dropped.

  • Colour took over the table. A French still life oil painting of the 20th century often flattens its space, tilts the tabletop toward the viewer and lets a blue jug or a turquoise vase carry the picture. Many were painted in small and middle formats, made for a room rather than a salon wall.

  • Fruit gave painters a harder test than flowers. Grapes need transparency, cherries need a single highlight each, and a glass carafe must show the room reflected in it. A fruit still life with a carafe is a demonstration of how light passes through things, and painters returned to it all their lives.

  • Most still life painters signed in a lower corner, sometimes with a date. A signed still life painting can be placed in its painter's career, and many of these works keep wide gilt or carved frames, including the heavy carved frames popular in Montparnasse between the wars.