Mixed Fruit – Melon, Grapes and Apples 1926

Samuel Peploe made this still life with oil paint, somewhere in the early 20th Century, maybe while thinking about his next snack. I love how Peploe seems to have constructed this painting from simple marks and colours. Look at the plate of fruit, he’s really gone at it with the brush, creating a real sense of depth and texture. The paint isn’t too thick or thin, just juicy. Those grapes on the plate are more than just round blobs, they’re little explosions of light and colour. Notice the way he’s used blue and purple to describe the shadows and form? These colours add a layer of cool contrast to the warm fruit, like a visual palate cleanser! For me, this kind of painting is like a visual conversation with artists like Manet or Cezanne, who both wrestled with the challenge of representing three-dimensional objects on a flat surface. But Peploe's use of colour is all his own, I think it's about embracing the ambiguity of art.