Image: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
View source →Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table
Pablo Picasso, 1909
Technical Details
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
164 × 132.5 cm (64.6 × 52.2 in)
Style
Analytic Cubism
Decade
1900s
About This Work
This large still life is one of the most ambitious works of the transitional period between Post-Impressionism and Cubism. The table, bread, fruit dish, and glasses are rendered with a new geometric severity, each object analyzed into its component planes and reassembled in a way that suggests multiple viewpoints simultaneously. The palette is already moving toward the restricted browns and grays of Analytic Cubism.
Painted in the winter of 1908–09, this work represents the moment when Picasso's new visual language crystallized into a coherent system. The large scale of the canvas — unusual for a still life — signals Picasso's ambition to make the still life genre carry the same weight as history painting.
Current Location
Valuation & Provenance
2026 Estimated Value
$40–70 million (est.)
* Estimates are based on comparable auction results and market analysis. Not a formal appraisal.
Last Known Sale
No public auction record — held in permanent museum collection
Keywords
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The Cubist Epoch by Douglas Cooper
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Picasso: A Life Documentary
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Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Reproduction
High-quality print of this revolutionary proto-Cubist masterpiece
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