On this date in 1693, Dom Perignon invented that effervescent version of wine, champagne.This still life, painted by Helen Searle, presents a realistic glass of champagne awaiting a sip!
Bubbly, Anyone?
On this date in 1693, Dom Perignon invented that effervescent version of wine, champagne.This still life, painted by Helen Searle, presents a realistic glass of champagne awaiting a sip!
Searle, a still-life painter from Rochester, New York, was a student of Johann Wilhelm Preyer, the leading still-life painter in Düsseldorf, Germany.…
In her painting Still Life with Champagne and Fruit, Searle plays her own variation on her predecessor's work, reducing its baroque overtones to a quieter, more refined image. Contrasting textures, shapes, and colors give a keen tactile sense to the ripe fruit and sparkling champagne, yet the arrangement is so finely tuned that even the wary bee seems part of a scheme designed to fix permanently an image doomed to change.
Source: National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996).
Pictured: Helen Searle, 1830–84, Still Life with Fruit and Champagne, 1869, oil, 11 1/8 x 14 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.