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We can hardly see over the tabletop. Almost like a child, we look in amazement at the visual spectacle artist Claude Monet has spread before us. Seemingly just out of reach, five ripe, velvety peaches in warm yellow and red tones are set on a cold, grey-grained marble slab. Next to them, a tall preserving jar is crammed with peaches. The preserving liquid with cloves and a strip of cinnamon promises a heavenly taste.

This is an unusual form of a still life – so how did Monet, then 26 years old, decide on this subject? Listen to curator Heike Biedermann:

“Monet was supported by his aunt. While staying in her country house in Sainte-Adresse, he found this subject of a jar of peaches, something very modern at that time. Since sugar was not so affordable in those days, preserving fruit and vegetables would not have been common for long. Methods for preserving fruit and so on could only really be developed once sugar beet was widely grown.”

And just as much as preserving fruit was modern in the 1860s, Monet also takes a modern artistic approach to his subject. This early work already tells of his enthusiasm for the way the appearance of one and the same object changes in the light. What do the fresh peaches on the marble tabletop look like? And those preserved in the jar? And how are they reflected in the marble? With this passion for how the look of things shifts and changes, Monet became one of the masters of impressionism – a movement named after a work he was to paint five years later: Impression, Sunrise.