Common Pear, European Pear

Lise Cloquet, also known as Anne-Louise Cloquet, was a French botanical painter who picked up drawing from her father, illustrator and engraver Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Cloquet. Lise’s flower paintings are evidence of a wealthy family background; painting flowers was thought to be a suitable pastime for wealthy women because of its more effeminate qualities. Cloquet’s works thus exhibit an interest, primarily, in artistic details rather than scientific ones.
Compositionally, Cloquet’s Common Pear is quite similar to the rest of her work. It has been taken out of its context; it is not lying on a table or on its side, but is curiously upright. Just as it is compositionally consistent with her work, in style, too, it is alike: colors are vivid, shadows realistic, and texture glossy. Yet this painting is one of three works which mark her deviation from merely flowery subjects towards a greater genre of plants: that of fruit. The only other two depictions of fruit within her album (another pear, and a group of cherries, also mark this shift. These are some of the very last paintings in her album.
Unlike many of her specimens, the European pear is a native of Europe and grows best in, among a few other European areas, France. Pears vary considerably in color and in shape, yet Cloquet depicts the pear as meticulously as she does any of her blooming flowers, capturing this specific fruit. The transition from red to yellow in the bottom right corner of the pear is seamless, the ridges at the top are enlivened by sloping highlights and shadows. The texture of the pear, in particular, is remarkable: the glossy sheen on the left side of the pear exhibits Cloquet’s close attention to detail.