Still Life with Flowers and Peaches

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Still Life with Flowers and Peaches

Artist Victoria DuBourg French, 1840 - 1926

Place of OriginFrance

Date1874

DimensionsPainting: 17 × 19 3/4 in. (43.2 × 50.2 cm)
Frame: 25 7/8 × 29 × 2 1/4 in. (65.7 × 73.7 × 5.7 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

2021.12

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 33

Exhibition HistoryLondon, Soppenbach & Delestre (with Kunsthandel Ivo Bouwman), French 19th and 20th Century Paintings, 29 November 1989 – 12 January 1990, no. 6.

London, Stoppenbach & Delestre, 25 Years in Cork Street: 1982-2007, 2007.

Label TextLaid out in three roughly pyramidal compositions, two piles of ripe peaches (one in a wicker basket) interlaced with leaves and one small bouquet of white roses are arranged on a wooden table set against a dark background. The three piles themselves form a pyramid together. Artist Victoria Dubourg specialized in still life images, an interest she shared with fellow artist Henri Fantin-Latour, who would become her husband (they met while copying the same painting by Renaissance artist Antonio da Correggio at the Louvre). By the second half of the 19th century, women artists in Paris had more opportunities to make a living as an artist, with private art schools opening for women and even a women artists’ union. Dubourg also regularly exhibited her work at both the Paris Salon (the annual state-sanctioned art show) and the Royal Academy of Arts in London and was awarded the French order of merit, the Legion of Honor, in 1920. However, Parisian women artists still faced tremendous challenges, with many of their fellow male artists (even, at times, Dubourg’s own husband) often dismissing their talent.