Today best known for his expansive Alpine landscapes, Giovanni Segantini was a skilled still life painter, engaging with the genre particularly in the early years of his career. Markedly different from the luminous mountain vistas of his maturity, the present painting exemplifies the young artist’s realist style, delighting in the colours and textures of the objects. A tipped copper pot spills cabbages and a cauliflower across a white tablecloth, with citrus fruit, a bright red lobster, sprigs of parsley and bay, and an glazed turquoise jug set before a woven reed backdrop.

Painted when the artist was just 22 years old, the work reflects a transitional moment in Segantini’s life. The artist, who was born into poverty in the Trentino and orphaned by the time he was eight, had moved to Milan in the 1870s where he was apprenticed to a decorative painter and took evening classes at the Brera Academy. In 1879, the year before he executed Still life with vegetables and lobster, he achieved his first major success with the church interior painting Il Coro di Sant’Antonio, acquired by Milan’s Società per le Belle Arti (fig. 1). Around this time, Segantini also gained the attention of influential dealer Vittore Grubicy de Dragon, who became a longstanding champion of his work. On Grubicy’s advice, the artist relocated to the Brianza region, beginning to experiment with painting en plein air and to turn his attention to landscape subjects.

For the young painter, still life paintings such as the present work served not only to flaunt Segantini’s artistic talent, but also to cater to the Milanese market of bourgeois collectors, for whom mid-sized still life works were eminently desirable. Needing to support himself financially, this shrewd choice of subject gave momentum to the artist’s business as he gained recognition in the city and beyond.

Segantini’s still lifes, while lesser known, are nonetheless highly regarded, and comparable examples to the present painting are today found in the de Young Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Still Life with Vegetables, 1886, fig. 2), which displays the same vivid realism and embrace of colour, and in the Segantini Museum, St. Moritz (Still Life with Fish, 1886, fig. 3), suggesting a move towards a looser, more painterly style that would become increasingly evident in his later landscapes.

Fig. 1 – Giovanni Segantini, Il coro di Sant’Antonio, 1879, oil on canvas, 119 x 85 cm. Gallerie d’Italia, Milan.

Fig. 2 – Giovanni Segantini, Still Life with Vegetables, 1886, oil on canvas, 56.5 x 79.4 cm. De Young Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1959.104.

Fig. 3 – Giovanni Segantini, Still Life with Fish, 1886, oil on canvas, 56.5 x 111 cm. Segantini Museum, St. Moritz.