Stilleben

This small, tightly organised composition showing a bowl of fruit and a flower is among the earliest known works by Ville Jais-Nielsen. The painting is signed ‘VO’, because in 1913 Ville still used her birth name, Oppenheim. The picture is the work of a young artist who was still learning. Having studied in Paris the previous year, she was now back in Copenhagen to continue her studies as the first pupil of the prominent Danish painter Harald Giersing. The painting was submitted to the juried Spring Exhibition at Charlottenborg in 1913, but was not accepted. Another three years would go by before she made her exhibition debut. Still lifes were a favourite motif among modern painters of the time: they were free from all requirements regarding narrative content, a trait that was central to the classical academic tradition. Arrangements of objects offered the opportunity to focus entirely on working with aspects of design, colour and brushstrokes. Alongside portraits, still lifes – or ‘nature mortes’, as Ville Jais-Nielsen herself called them – would continue to occupy her throughout her life as she constantly developed her interpretation of the genre.