Louise Moillon Paris 1610 - 1696

Anonymous sale, Paris, Drouot, 3 December 2001, lot 66, where purchased by the present owner.

The daughter of Nicolas Moillon, a Protestant painter and picture dealer, Louise was raised in the district of St-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, which had become a centre for painters fleeing religious persecution in the southern Netherlands. Her specialisation in still life painting followed the example of her stepfather, François Garnier (circa 1600 - 1658), and the majority of Louise's smaller pictures, simple arrangements of fruit in baskets or dishes, are similar in format and spirit to those of Garnier, although she far excelled him in her technical mastery of the genre.  The present work is one of a number of larger, more ambitious compositions that she painted, showing market stalls laden with baskets of fruit and vegetables and including one, two or three large-scale figures.  Others include The Fruit and Vegetable Seller, signed and dated 1630, oil on canvas, 121 by 165 cm., in Paris, Musée du Louvre (see M. Faré, Le Grand Siècle de la Nature Morte en France, Fribourg 1974, pp. 50 - 51, reproduced); The Fruit seller, signed and dated 1629, oil on canvas, 112 by 152 cm., Private Collection, New York (Faré, op. cit., pp. 48 - 49, reproduced in colour); and The Market Stall, oil on canvas, 116 by 165 cm., offered Monaco, Sotheby's, 2 December 1988, lot 657. The stylistic similarity of these works and their comparable dimensions suggests they are all of a similar date, painted circa 1630, and thus relatively early works by the artist.