Jean-baptiste Gallet (1820–1848), Still Life With Grapes On A Marble Table

Oil on panel. 28.5 x 38.5 cm. Signed and dated "JB Gallet, 1845" lower left.

Jean-Baptiste Gallet studied from 1834 to 1840 under Thierriat at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, where he was enrolled and admitted under the name "Gallay". He exhibited still lifes of flowers and fruit in Lyon in 1842-43 and in Paris in 1847 and 1848. These studies of flowers or fruit often feature, as here, uniform brown backgrounds designed to bring out the light tones.

The tuberculosis that caused his premature death at the age of twenty-eight prevented him from practicing painting and he had to fall back on the technique of drawing or watercolor. Today we can count only about twenty of the painter's paintings that have survived to this day.