How a slight shift of a layout to the right can confuse the eye.Even the second plum emphasizes this effect,so the fruits taken as a whole look like a raft pushed by the wind in the dead of night.While the moonlight shines forever into the third plum behind a black vessel moored in a Renaissance harbor...Hallucinatory painting?
I see hands reflected in the second plum and a house in the moonlight in the right one. Alain may be right about what I see...a hallucination. the colour are rendered in a manner that elevates the plums to something beyond 'just fruits'. Julian ou do remind your viewers to look carefully at the world and 'see'.
Don't you recognize in the second plum the face of Julian himself like a shadow,on the left side,with his hair just under the stem,the white reflection just under his chin,palette in hand under this same reflection(that doesn't look like a highlight because it seems located in the distance)and perhaps the easel on the right?I am nearly sure that as in his self-portraits,the artist looks at us during a short break.This is a highly classic representation of the painters by themselves throughout centuries:the artist at work.I think the meanings of a successful painting is inexhaustible.You are right Barbara M,these plums are more than "...just fruits", they are mirrors too,mirrors of the world.Our world.
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