Table with Apples

Kees Franse studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam, where he now works as a teacher. He makes portrait, landscape and still-life paintings, pen drawings, watercolours and lithographs in a figurative style. Of recent years he has taken to adding three-dimensional elements to the flat surface. In 1968 he made a series of paintings and watercolours of lay figures in which he applied, for instance, the head from a real figure to the painted or drawn composition. The round form of such a head started him off on a search for another round form to use as a means of expression. The apple is a new motif for him. As well as a 'Rack with Apples' of 1971, the Museum now also owns this 'Table with Apples' of 1973. The table is shown 'in perspective' against the plank wall, while the 'foreshortening', familiar to us from painting, is taken over by the variation in the volumes of the apples which form the still-life on the table top.