Artwork
Girl peeling an apple
Girl peeling an apple is an oil painting by the Dutch Golden Age artist Cornelis Bisschop. It dates from 1667 and is held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum.
About this work
Technique & Style
The work is an oil painting executed on wooden panel, reflecting 17th-century Dutch genre painting conventions.
The work is an oil painting executed on wooden panel, reflecting 17th-century Dutch genre painting conventions. Bisschop's brushwork demonstrates careful modeling of form through layered glazes, particularly evident in the rendering of the girl's facial features and the translucency of the apple's skin. The composition employs a shallow spatial depth and focused chiaroscuro to isolate the figure against a darkened background, emphasizing tactile materiality through visible brushstrokes in the drapery and fruit surface.
These formal choices align with genre painting traditions of the Dutch Golden Age, where domestic scenes prioritized intimate narrative detail and painterly surface effects.
History & Provenance
Cornelis Bisschop painted Girl peeling an apple in 1667, an oil work measuring 70 cm by 57 cm that depicts a girl holding an apple. The painting entered the collection of the Rijksmuseum, where it remains on display. Its creation history is documented solely by contemporary records of Bisschop’s output, and no commission or sale is recorded. The work’s provenance is limited to its acquisition by the Rijksmuseum, with no earlier ownership chain noted.
Girl peeling an apple is held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, where it is catalogued as an oil-on-panel genre scene by Cornelis Bisschop dated 1667. The Wikidata record for the painting confirms both its location in the Rijksmuseum and its inclusion in that museum's collection, while also recording its physical dimensions of 70 by 57 centimetres.
No exhibition history is documented in the available sources.
Overview
Cornelis Bisschop’s 1667 oil painting Girl peeling an apple offers a quiet domestic scene rendered in the Dutch genre tradition. The work is part of the Rijksmuseum’s collection and presents a solitary woman engaged in a simple, everyday task, illuminated by a soft window light that contrasts with the surrounding interior shadows.
Subject & Meaning
The composition centers on a kneeling figure, her hair gathered and a dark apron over a light dress, as she carefully removes the skin of an apple with a tiny knife. The half‑peeled fruit, the focused expression, and the modest setting suggest themes of domestic virtue, the passage of time, and the quiet dignity of household labor.
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Artist & collection
Artist
Cornelis Bisschop (1630–1674) was a Dutch Golden Age artist, born in Dordrecht.
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The Young Mother
Interior with a Woman Combing a Little Girl's Hair
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