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Still Life with Herring, Bread, and Cheese
Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (French, 1803–1860)
1858
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Unframed: 63 x 38 cm (24 13/16 x 14 15/16 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Bequest of Noah L. Butkin
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This painting forms a pair with the Still Life with Pipe and Matches. Along with several other paintings, they decorated the dining room of the artist's home, each painting representing a different stage of a meal. In this composition the artist focused his attention on rendering textures, which are as varied as the objects themselves: the skin of the smoked herrings, whose highlights echo the silver of the goblet and the cover of the pitcher; the spongy surface of the bread; the velvety crust of the cheese; and finally the soft wood surface (pine?) that supports this still life. The Latin inscription translates: "How virtuous and how great to live with simple things."
