Poppies in a Blue Vase

Poppies in a Blue Vase (Mohn in blauer Vase) is an oil on canvas by Cuno Amiet dated 1932, a large still life of 98 by 90 centimetres that came to auction from a Swiss private collection where it had passed by descent.

In a dark-blue jug set on a white cloth patterned with red, Amiet arranges a dense bouquet dominated by big orange-red poppies, with smaller pale-pink and white blooms among the foliage; fallen petals lie scattered on the cloth. He signs and dates the picture with his initials at lower right, and the reverse carries the initials, the date, his own inventory number P.O. 16 and the simple inscription 'Mohn'.

Amiet was in his mid-sixties and long settled at Oschwand, the hamlet near Herzogenbuchsee that had been his home since 1898 and whose house and garden supplied him with subjects in every season. The still life also falls just after a severe blow: when Munich's Glaspalast burned in the summer of 1931, some fifty of his paintings — many of them early works — were destroyed, a loss contemporaries described as unprecedented for a single artist; Amiet, however, responded with renewed production.

The painting was offered at Sotheby's in Zurich in the Swiss Art sale of 2018 (lot 58) with an estimate of 30,000 to 50,000 Swiss francs.