17th -20th centuries · Flowers, fruits, objects, science and professional affirmation

From Louise Moillon and Clara Peeters to Frida Kahlo, women artists make still life a space of observation, virtuosity, identity and modern invention.

Still life offered several women artists a professional field at a time when access to academies, the nude and large commissions was often limited to them. This constraint does not reduce the genre. Clara Peeters, active at the beginning of the 17th century, accurately painted food, metals and precious objects and sometimes slipped her self-portrait into their reflections. Louise Moillon orders fruits, baskets and markets in sober light; Rachel Ruysch combines flowers of different seasons according to an impossible but credible botanical architecture. In the 18th century, Anne Vallayer-Coster combined flowers of different seasons according to an impossible but credible botanical architecture. In the 18th century, Anne Vallayer-Coster expanded the repertoire to include instruments, arts attributes and shells. Morisot, Ancher, Valadon and Kahlo then transform flowers and fruits through touch, domestic space, color or autobiographical symbol. The genre thus links scientific observation, the art market, daily life and the artist's affirmation. The "Women still life painters" selection notably compares Cup of cherries, plums and melon and The Fruit and Vegetable Merchant. His reading favors movement.

In these still lifes, the object is never minor: it becomes proof of knowledge, a field of invention and sometimes an indirect signature of the painter.