Emilie Preyer (German, 1849–1930) Still Life with Peach, Plums, Grapes and Hazelnuts with Fly on a Tablecloth; together with a companion painting Both signed 'Emilie Preyer' bottom right, one also illegibly inscribed, dated '1903' and signed on stretcher verso; pair oils, one on paper laid down to canvas, the other directly on canvas Largest: 7 1/8 x 9 3/4 in. (18.1 x 24.8cm) (2) PROVENANCE: David Bendann's, Baltimore, Maryland. Private Collection, Baltimore, Maryland. By descent in the family. Private Collection, South Carolina. NOTE: An important female painter in 19th and early 20th century Germany, Emilie Preyer was an unofficial student of the Düsseldorf Royal Art Academy. She also received training from her father, the well-known still life painter Johann Wilhelm Preyer, a master of the Düsseldorf School of painting. While Emilie's painting is closely tied to her father's work, she is recognized in her own right as a skillfull trompe l'oeil tabletop still life painter. Rendered with great optical fidelity and meticulous detail, Emilie Preyer's still lifes are carefully arranged, typically featuring fruit, sometimes accompanied by champagne, nuts and insects. Each of the present paintings features grapes, peaches, and a fly. Water droplets are also present in each work, and one of the paintings includes plums and hazelnuts. While the fruit is placed atop a marble slab in one of the paintings, and on a tablecloth in the other, the transience of life is apparent in each: in the former painting, the peach in the background is beginning to rot, as noted by the turning color of its skin; in the latter painting, the plum skins have started to split, also indicating that the fruit is past its prime. Preyer's fool-the-eye mastery is clearly on display in each work, not only in terms of the technical proficiency with which the paintings' elements are depicted, but also in terms of her purposeful placement of individual elements over the front edges of the tabletops: a single grape in one painting, and a plum leaf in the other. In so doing, Preyer convincingly breaks the surface of the picture plane, thereby creating a visual foreground which draws the viewer into each finely painted composition. We wish to thank Mr. Hans Paffrath from Galerie Paffrath in Düsseldorf, Germany, for kindly confirming the authenticty of the present works.