Four blue plums

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?

The darkness and mystery in this work, with the one blue highlight is pretty amazing for three little plums. great color and brushwork. geo

I was just painting grapes myself! A very similar set up though mine are green. :)

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'.

Ah - So sublime!

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.