Still Life with apples,wineglass and pewter jug

Carl Schuch was a Vienna-born painter who settled in Munich and later Paris, developing a distinctive approach to still life painting that drew on both the Dutch 17th-century tradition and the contemporary influence of Courbet and Manet. His 1876 still life of apples, a wineglass, and a pewter jug places him squarely in the European still life revival of the 1870s, when painters across the continent were returning to the modest objects of domestic life as vehicles for serious painterly investigation. Schuch's still lifes, now held in collections including the Alte Nationalgalerie, are recognized as among the finest German contributions to the genre in the 19th century.

Schuch employs a rich, confident paint surface — the pewter jug and wineglass rendered with attention to their different reflective qualities, the apples painted with a solid, Courbetesque materiality.