Still Life with Fruit 1905

Samuel Peploe made “Still Life with Fruit” with oil paint on canvas; you can see his broad strokes of mostly dark browns and blues, as well as white, orange, and red. I like to imagine Peploe setting up his still life with careful consideration, maybe even rearranging the objects multiple times until he found just the right composition. Then, he picked up his brush and started laying down those confident strokes of color, one after another, building up the forms and textures of the fruit, the bowl, and the cloth. You can really feel the physicality of the paint, how it sits on the surface of the canvas, creating a sense of depth and volume. That dab of white paint on the edge of the bowl is really doing it for me. It captures the way light hits a curved surface. Painters are always in conversation with each other, even across generations, and Peploe seems to be riffing on Cezanne in his painting. I always think of painting as a way of working through ideas, of trying to capture something elusive and ineffable. It’s never fixed or certain, but always open to interpretation and change.