Plums on a white dish on a table

Moillon, the daughter of the protestant artist Nicolas Moillon (1555-1619), grew up in the St. Germain des Près district of Paris, which from the beginning of the seventeenth century was a centre for painters from the southern Netherlands seeking refuge from religious persecution. Painting from childhood, she soon came under the influence of her stepfather, the still life painter François Garnier (c.1600-1658), whom her mother married in 1620. Her output appears to have been at its most productive in the 1630s, steadily decreasing after her marriage in 1640 to Etienne Girardot, a dealer in wood. The present work is comparable with four of her pictures, all dated 1634 (Faré, op.cit, p. 60, nos. 2-5).