''Still Life with Ham'' is a 1870s

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

painting by French artist

Philippe Rousseau Philippe Rousseau (22 February 1816, Paris – 5 December 1887, Acquigny) was a French painter known primarily for his still life paintings. Biography He was a pupil of Baron Antoine-Jean Gros and Jean-Victor Bertin at the École des Beaux-Arts ...

. Done in oil on canvas, the painting depicts a number of items set on a table. The work is currently in the collection of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

Description

The painting is intricately and intimately detailed; not only did Rousseau render a ham (described as "succulent" by one source) and a fully set table, he also included an issue of ''

Le Figaro ''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French newspapers of reco ...

'' (a prominent French newspaper) addressed to his home. The work is highly contemporaneous to the early 1870s.

References

{{Met-stub 1870 paintings Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Still life paintings Food and drink paintings