Art and The Vegetable

Works by Manet, Caillebotte, Vaclav Maly, Merritt Chase and Blume

Apr 1, 2009

Paintings of asparagus, carrots, gardens and harvests show how some major 19th and 20th-century artists were clearly under the spell of vegetable love.

Great artists have always enjoyed painting floral themes, whether capturing fields of wildflowers, exquisite blooms in vases or simply the perfection of a single fallen petal. Fruits in bowls also frequently appeal to the painterly eye. Then there are vegetables, the supposedly less-exciting garden inhabitants: sometimes supple, often juicy, of all colors and shapes. Artists who bring vegetables to the canvas seem just as appreciative of beauty — yet with an added sense of pragmatism, since vegetables not only look aesthetically pleasing, but they provide hearty nourishment as well.

Caillebotte's Gardeners and Maly's Cabbage Market

French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte was very fond of gardening and attuned to the rhythms of the seasons and the earth. Caillebotte’s Les Jardiniers or The Gardeners (circa 1875) shows barefoot gardeners at work, their pant-legs rolled up in the heat while they water long rows of young vegetables. Moving forward to harvest time, Czech artist Vaclav Maly’s Cabbage Market brings vegetable stalls and buyers to life, with everyday cabbage looking lovely stacked in flowery green heaps or tucked within bushel baskets underneath a warm, bright sun.

Manet's Asparagus

Edouard Manet was an innovative painter who associated with and inspired the French Impressionists. Manet of course took on many subjects beyond still lifes, but when he did turn to close-ups of flowers or food, he used thick, expressive brushstrokes. Manet’s Bunch of Asparagus truly offers asparagus with the same freshness as the bundle Manet painted in 1880.

White to pale-green with shades of violet and purple at the tips, Manet’s asparagus rests upon a bed of darker greens, looking like they were just brought in from the local market and are now about to be steamed or sautéed. Incidentally, Manet's asparagus portrait was commissioned by a French businessman, and the artist's vegetable verve pleased his patron so much that he earned an extra 200 francs.

Merritt Chase's Still Life with Vegetables

American artist and educator William Merritt Chase enjoyed both painting and teaching still lifes, and his Still Life with Vegetables (1870) is a fine example of such work. Beyond the unhappily dead bird ready for plucking and gutting, Chase shows an otherwise intriguing arrangement of green onions, cucumbers, carrots and other root vegetables, along with cabbage and tomatoes. While tomatoes and even cucumbers technically belong to the fruit family, they do drift over in classification and can still be included with vegetables.

Chase's forefront tomato in particular, with its slight puckering toward the top, is vividly appealing. His style is more realistic and detailed than Manet’s, with keen attention to the veins of the cabbage leaves, the bumps along the cucumbers' skin, the slight withering of the carrots. Some of these vegetables are a bit past their peak, but it appears that once they are all cooked together, they will make a decent enough feast.

Blume’s Vegetable Dinner

Finally, while vegetables are eternal, there can be more modern and cryptic interpretations of their existence. Russian-born American artist Peter Blume painted Vegetable Dinner in 1927 when he was only 21 years old. Here the vegetables seem secondary to the women preparing them. The hands of one woman peel and dice, while another woman sits watching. What is the reason for this strictly vegetarian meal? Ethical or economical? Why does only one woman cook while the other coolly smokes a cigarette?

Still, beyond Vegetable Dinner's air of mystery it is hard to ignore the smoothly contained presence of the carrots, squash and potatoes — right before they go under the knife to become Blume's featured menu item.

Sources

The copyright of the article Art and The Vegetable in Modern Art History is owned by Meg Nola. Permission to republish Art and The Vegetable in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.