Gooseberries on a Table
Medium
oil on paper mounted on wood
Dimensions
unframed: 29.7 × 22.8 cm · framed: 45.5 × 38.5 × 4.5 cm
Classification
Painting
Department
European Painting and Sculpture
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Accession Number
1987.32
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
About this artwork
Coorte worked in Middelburg, a wealthy maritime city in the southern part of the Netherlands that fostered a poetic, scientific, and spiritual examination of the natural world. Gooseberries—a modest, local pleasure—could be picked in the wild, although Dutch gardeners in the 1600s were the first to cultivate them to improve their taste. The strong illumination gives the plant a stark grandeur, despite the small scale, and the dark background emphasizes the fruit's delicate translucency. The dess...