Oil on canvas
130.7 x 97.5 cm
Donated by Nadia Léger and Georges Bauquier
Musée national Fernand Léger Inv. 96008


In 1927, Léger painted a wide array of still lifes comprising leaf motifs – often coupled with other objects: bottles, inkpots or fruit. Highly ornamental, these paintings reveal vegetable forms, giving them a life of their own. The painter believed that “all of the most humble objects have a decorative worth.” The rise of modern sciences, with the techniques of x-rays or microscopes, shows familiar objects in the light of a new realism. Léger arranges this still life, dominated by the silhouette of a leaf at the centre of the composition, by using the close-up principle of films. The browns and blacks create a deep sense of space around the objects which seem to radiate on the canvas.