Früchtestillleben mit zwei Pfirsichen sowie blauen und grünen Trauben am Zweig und einem Weinblatt auf einer Marmortischplatte. Ca. 1870/80s.
Oil on canvas.
Weiß/Paffrath EP-Wv 96. Signed lower right. 19 x 26,5 cm (7,4 x 10,4 in).
Verso of stretcher with remains on an old label.

Emilie Preyer, just as her two years older brother Paul, was trained in arts by the famous and successful father Johann Wilhelm Preyer. She showed first watercolors of flowers and fruits in an exhibition in her hometown Düsseldorf in 1866. For women were not accepted by the academy, she received additional private lessons from the history painter Heinrich Mücke and the landscape painter Hans Gude, however, for a short time only in 1866/67. As early as around 1870, at the age of 21 Jahren, Emilie Preyer was an established artist, the Cologne Cathedral Construction Lottery acquired two fruit still lifes, the ‘Deutsches Künstleralbum‘ showed a lavishly-made full-page color lithograph in 1872. Study journeys took her to Dresden, Antwerp and Holland. Numerous exhibition participations deliver additional proof of her artistic success. Collectors, especially in the U.S. were fond of her paintings while she was still alive. She died as a highly acknowledged artist in Düsseldorf in 1930.

Throughout her life, Emilie Preyer exclusively made fruits and flower still lifes. Drawings and watercolors deliver proof of her well-developed power of observation of the individual objects and the well-thought-out composition of her paintings. In terms of style she followed her father, however, her works also show many individual features. The artist put special emphasis on the exposure of light from the side, which illustrates a delicate and soft nuances. "Next to the delicately veined white or red marble plates she also chose wooden plates or – quite typical for her – starched tablecloths provided with a fine pattern. […] The combination of fruits with twigs and leaves or adding a butterfly, a wasp or a live fly and lucent drops of water, she demonstrates a closeness to nature and freshness." (Siegfried Weiß, in: Siegfried Weiß und Hans Paffrath (publisher), Johann Wilhelm und Emilie Preyer, Cologne 2009, pp. 151f.). [CB].