Artwork
Still Life with Four Apples
Still Life with Four Apples is an oil painting by the Cubism Synthetic artist Vilhelm Lundstrøm. It dates from 1929 and is held in the collection of the Statens Museum for Kunst.
About this work
Overview
Vilhelm Lundstrøm’s 1929 oil painting presents a modest still‑life arrangement of four apples. Rendered against a muted gray background, the composition balances three apples clustered on the left with a single apple isolated on the right, creating a quiet visual dialogue. The work resides in the collection of Denmark’s National Gallery, the Statens Museum for Kunst.
Subject & Meaning
The subject consists solely of the fruit, stripped of any surrounding objects or narrative cues. By limiting the scene to apples of varying size and tone, Lundstrøm emphasizes form and spatial relationship, inviting contemplation of ordinary objects as carriers of visual harmony rather than symbolic content.
Technique & Style
Executed in oil on canvas, the artist employs a restrained palette of whites, grays and blacks. Subtle tonal gradations model the apples, suggesting volume and surface texture while maintaining a flat, almost abstract quality. The light gray ground functions as a neutral field, allowing the tonal contrasts of the fruit to dominate the visual field.
History & Provenance
Created in 1929, the painting entered the holdings of the Statens Museum for Kunst, Denmark’s principal state museum for visual arts. It remains part of the museum’s permanent collection, where it is displayed as an example of Lundstrøm’s early exploration of simplified still‑life motifs.
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Artist & collection
Artist
Vilhelm Lundstrøm (26 May 1893 – 9 May 1950) was a Danish modernist painter. He was a central figure in early Danish experimental art and introduced French cubism to Denmark.
