A basket of peaches with a porcelain pot, walnut and knife on a table

Anne Vallayer-Coster was one of the most prominent painters in Paris during her lifetime, known for her portraits and still lifes. The daughter of a goldsmith, she was raised in artistic circles and, though she had no known formal training, she was unanimously admitted to the Académie Royale in 1770, despite the institution’s restriction limiting membership to only four women at a time. She regularly exhibited at the Salon from 1771 and was appointed painter to the court of Marie Antoinette in 1780. Amid growing comparison with her contemporaries Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun and Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, both celebrated portraitists, Vallayer-Coster focused her practice on still lifes and flower paintings.

When this still life was sold in 1968, the reproduction in the sale catalogue showed a tall, fluted wineglass in the background of the composition, behind the peaches at right. This element was likely a nineteenth-century addition and, according to an inscription on the reverse, was removed when the painting was restored in 1981. In her 1970 catalogue raisonné, Marianne Roland Michel published the 1968 photograph, and noted that an earlier image of the same painting (not illustrated) showed a signature on the stone ledge at left.

On the reverse of an undated photograph of the painting, Alexandre Ananoff endorses the attribution to Anne Vallayer-Coster. He also notes that there was once a glass in the composition at right.