Fruit

Fruit is a carefully crafted illustration by Alphonse Mucha, who himself was perhaps the most famous Czech artist of all time. We find an abundance of fruit within this scene, including pears, apples and grapes.

The female model stares directly at the viewer, over her right shoulder. Her hair is beautifully decorated with flower petals and the top of the canvas is cropped with a curved shape which allows elements of a frame to be inserted above. She wears a simple light blue dress, but has many accessories which lift her image her substantially - perhaps it was easier for the artist to work in this way. Her front is covered by the fruit which she carefully holds in both hands. A large row of grapes slip down the side of her arm, whilst peaches, apples and pears and held together closely in order to keep the entire arrangement from falling apart. It is unclear as to how long she would have had to have held this pose for the artist to work, but perhaps she only held the fruit for a short period, and posed without it for most of the time.

The artist places his usual signature into the bottom right of the painting, and one can consider this to be relatively devoid of background detail, as compared to many of his other illustrations. He focuses on the model herself within this composition, and does use any of the Art Nouveau lettering or complex, tiled patterns across the background that feature so often elsewhere. Mucha would continue to produce portraits such as this one right across his career and it became very much the signature of his career.

We have included a larger image of the artwork below in order to help you to understand and appreciate the detail used by Mucha across this piece. He was highly successful as a commercial illustrator and would also produce paintings too at other points in his career. His approach is instantly recognisable today and even though Fruit is not one of his most famous paintings, it is still extremely valuable today and also of considerable artistic note. The artist would use symbolism sometimes within his compositions, and perhaps here he is talking about strong health, with a young woman being joined by fresh fruit. His skills were called on for a number of advertising posters too, where specific products would be included alongside scenes of a desirable lifestyle.