The most effective antidote to the dour astringency of the Gerhard Richter retrospective this spring was probably a trip to Boston to see “Impressionist Still Life.”¹ Before anyone says anything about the salutary effect of exhibitions with “Impressionist” in the title on museum revenues, I would like to point out that this one, at least, was not just another crowdpleasing potpourri of everyone’s favorite pictures, but a closely reasoned celebration of painting as painting, as intelligent as it was delectable. “Impressionist Still Life” could, admittedly, make even the most jaded museumgoer sigh with delight with its assembly of tasty textbook icons and unexpected zingers, but at the same time, it allowed (or forced) fresh considerations of the role of subject matter in modern painting, the relationship of perception to invention, and even the nature of modernity itself.

The exhibition’s impressive selection of justifiably famous Cézannes, for example, was itself almost worth the trip, but the pleasure of seeing these splendid, normally dispersed pictures in close proximity was enhanced by the comparable pleasure of grasping their relationship to other works by other artists in the show. Beginning with the densely loaded Still Life With Bread and Eggs (1865, Cincinnati Art Museum), and ending with a group of rough-hewn late paintings of skulls, by way of such iconic mature masterpieces as the Metropolitan’s somber Still Life With a Ginger Jar and Eggplants (1893–94) and the Musée d’Orsay’s rosy Still Life With Onions(1896–98), “Impressionist Still Life” offered a miniature