In the first of these two articles looking at the roles of wicker baskets in paintings, I concentrated on narrative works, and introduced their use to carry meals, and in gathering food such as fruit. They also have a long tradition of use for the display of fruit and flowers, so feature in many still life paintings.
Caravaggio’s milestone painting of a Basket of Fruit from the end of the sixteenth century shows what at first appears to be a trompe l’oeil basket of summer fruit, including peach, apple, pear, figs, quince and grapes. But these aren’t fit for consumption; with the exception of the quince, all are victims of parasites or disease. Suggestions as to how this should be read include fading beauty, natural decay, and as a metaphor of the Catholic Church of the time.
While Henry Lerolle’s main connection with the Impressionists was as a patron, he was also a fine artist, and painted several large murals. Later in his life he took to painting apples in still life compositions, such as this arrangement in a wonderfully rustic wicker basket, from about 1890.
Jean-François Millet’s Ceres (The Summer) (c 1864-65) is a classical mythological portrait. She stands, her breasts swollen and ready for lactation, her hair adorned with ripe ears of wheat, a sickle in her right hand to cut the harvest, and a traditional winnow (used to separate the grain from chaff) in her left hand. At her feet is a basketful of bread, with ground flour and cut sheaves of wheat behind. The background shows the wheat harvest in full swing, right back to a group of grain- or hay-stacks and an attendant wagon in the distance. The term bread basket is used in English to denote both the stomach, and regions that grow a lot of cereals and other crops used as staple foods.
Jan Vermeer’s Milkmaid, from about 1658-59, features a domestic wicker storage basket hanging by the window. Because they are porous to the atmosphere, wicker baskets were widely used to store food, as well as to present it, as in the bread basket on the table.
Larger wicker baskets were in extensive use in the fishing industry, as shown in Winslow Homer’s watercolour of Fisherfolk on the Beach at Cullercoats, painted in 1881 when he lived in this small fishing community on the north-east coast of England. Women were responsible for loading the catch into their baskets, and carrying them up the beach to carts, which transferred them a few miles to the nearest fish market.
Although wicker baskets have now generally been replaced with containers made of synthetic materials like plastic, they remain in common use for clothes and linen, before, during and after washing.
John S Clifton’s Buck Washing on Datchet Mead from ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ Act III, scene v from 1849 shows Falstaff’s fate when he hides amidst dirty clothing in a laundry basket. Once the servants get the laundry basket to the riverbank they empty its contents, complete with a shaken Falstaff, into the water for washing.
Wicker baskets have been adapted for more specialist uses, including panniers on horses and other beasts of burden.
Constant Troyon’s magnificent On the Way to Market from 1859 shows wicker panniers being used to transport young lambs, for example.
Some wicker baskets tell of hardship and poverty.
In Gustave Courbet’s Stone Breakers (1849), destroyed as a result of Allied bombing of Dresden, these itinerant roadside labourers are not only dressed in clothes that have seen better days, but their wicker baskets look overworked.
In Jean-François Millet’s Angelus, completed around 1857-59, a destitute couple are praying over their small basket of potatoes, as they try to eke a living from that pitifully poor soil.
Wicker baskets were also used by those selling flowers and produce in towns and cities in a bid to scrape their living.
Jean-François Raffaëlli’s elderly Garlic Seller from about 1880 is making his way across a muddy field just beyond one of the new industrial areas on the outskirts of Paris, his battered old wicker basket containing the garlic he hopes to sell.