Grapes in a basket, with pears, plums, cheese, butter in a porcelain dish, pastries on a pewter dish and a knife on a partially draped table

Van Schooten's oeuvre has often been regarded as representative of the development of still life painting in the Netherlands. His early work consists mostly of large market or kitchen scenes showing an abundance of produce, with or without figures, in the tradition of Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer (for example the picture dated 1634 in the Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum, Brunswick). However, Van Schooten's style began to develop under the influence of his contemporaries in Haarlem - for example Nicholas Gillis and Floris van Dyck - turning increasingly to breakfast-pieces, with an accumulation of items on a table top, tilted towards the spectator and covered with rugs or white damask cloths. These horizontal panels gradually evolved towards smaller-scale still lifes with simplified content (for example that in the Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem), reflecting the influence of the younger Haarlem masters of the monochrome breakfast-pieces, Pieter Claesz. and Willem Heda. Van Schooten's later work, amongst which the present picture - datable to circa 1650 - should be counted, often focuses on fruit, whether a bowl of plums or, as here, a basket of grapes, with cherries or berries on small plates arranged in a diagonal across a table top - in this case an effect achieved by the plates of pastries and butter, and the cheeses, motifs associated more with the artist's earlier career.