Fish on the Beach (Codfish and Gurnard)

Antoine Vollon was one of the most highly regarded still-life painters in France during the second half of the nineteenth century, celebrated for combining the Old Master weight of Chardin with a more robust, heavily-impastoed realism. Fish on the Beach (1885) demonstrates his particular skill with the textures and iridescent surfaces of fresh fish — a subject that tested any painter's ability to render reflective, scaled surfaces with conviction. Vollon's fish paintings were admired by fellow artists and collectors alike, and works like this were frequently exhibited at the Paris Salon. Now held in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, it stands as a fine example of the serious ambition French painters brought to still life.

Vollon applies paint with considerable bravura, using thick impasto to build up the luminous surfaces of the fish. The palette is silvery and cool, enlivened by the red of the gurnard. Composition is deliberately informal — the fish scattered on shore as if just landed — and the lighting emphasizes the glistening wet surfaces.