Still Life with Strawberries

Still-life paintings often suggest a human presence, implying the viewer’s bodily relationship to a tabletop and investing inanimate objects with emotion. Pierre-Auguste Renoir made still-life paintings throughout his career for financial reasons (they were easy to sell), to explore color combinations, and to complement his figural compositions, which themselves often feature still-life elements. He once told his dealer that his studies of roses were “research into flesh tones for a nude.” Here, his rounded, lushly painted strawberries in a dish on a white cloth also recall the rosy flesh of his female nudes.