(Paris circa 1610–1696)
Apricots, a basket of plums, a cockatoo and a blue tit,
oil on canvas, 46 x 75.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Sale Finarte-Semenzato, Florence, 19 February 2003, lot 31 (as Louise Moillon);
Sale Finarte, Milan, 17 June 2003, lot 661 (as Louise Moillon);
European Private Collection

Literature:
D. Alsina, Louyse Moillon, la nature morte au Grand Siecle, Dijon 2009, p. 267, no. 135 fig. CXXXVII (under ‘Peintres anonymes de l´ecole italienne’)

The present painting was mistakenly published with an attribution to an anonymous Italian artist in the monograph of Louise Moillon by Dominique Alsina in 2009. However after examining the present work in the original in 2010. Dominque Alsina confirmed an attribution to Louise Moillon and suggested a date of before 1641 and circa 1632. As such the present work should be considered to be an early work by the artist (written communication 18 November 2010).

Louise Moillon was the daughter of the Protestant Nicolas Moillon (1555–1619), a painter and member of the Académie de St Luc. She grew up in the St–Germain-des-Près district of Paris, which, from the beginning of the 17th century, was a centre for painters from the southern Netherlands seeking refuge from religious persecution. Flemish influences appear in her still-life work, a specialization in which she followed her stepfather, François Garnier (c. 1600–58).

From an early age Moillon worked on studies of fruit, as in the present painting. She took meticulous care in the depiction of textures, such as the surface of the basket, indebted to the Flemish precedent, while the elegance of the composition is uniquely French.

Moillon enjoyed a notable reputation. Georges de Scudéry drew hyperbolic analogies between Moillon, Linard and Pieter Bouclé and Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. After her marriage in 1640 to the Calvinist Etienne Girardot, her output seems to have steadily decreased and after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, she and her family suffered religious persecution. There are no recorded works after this date.

Several of her seven brothers and sisters were also artists, most notably Isaac Moillon (1614–73) who, unlike Louise, became a member of the Académie Royale.