About the Work
The artist has depicted a pear on the scale of 1:1 - a pear on a stone pedestal, overripe and attracting insects. The contemporaries of the Frankfurt painter recognised immediately that they were witnessing a break with "the art of the appropriate". What should really be seen on a pedestal of this kind was a "heroic" subject and not an "ordinary fruit". But the representation makes clear the change in the significance of the still life during the eighteenth century. Suddenly the focus was on the beauty of the object and not only its symbolic content.
About the Acquisition
The artist Minna Roberth (1851–1920) was a resident of Kronberg and associated with the artists’ colony there. In her will, she bequeathed a number of paintings to the Städel Museum along with several books and works on paper. She specifically proposed the then director of the Städel, Georg Swarzenski, as the expert who should determine whether the artworks were suitable for the museum’s collection. In her list of items included in the bequest, the donor referred to the two Juncker paintings as ‘2 Breakfasts’.
