Louise Moillon was the daughter of painter Nicolas Moillon (1555–1619), the sister of painter Isaac Moillon (1614–1673) and the stepdaughter of painter François Garnier (1600–1672). Such an environment was well-suited to fostering her artistic talent. Her father was a Calvinist, a painter and an art dealer, and had established his business from 1616 on the Pont Notre-Dame, and the following year at the major annual art fair of Saint-Germain. Here, numerous Flemish and Dutch painters and dealers rubbed shoulders and disseminated the new Nordic trends in painting, along with their tastes in diverse genres: landscapes, seascapes, market scenes and still lifes. L. Moillon’s still lifes exist within the young Nordic tradition, specifically the sub-genre of “tables servies”, in which a variety of foods are juxtaposed in a way that draws the eye and excites the appetite. She also painted genre scenes in the Flemish style, such as La Marchande de fruits et de légumes (1630).

L. Moillon may have learned the rudiments of her art from her father. Following his death in September 1619, we know that she benefitted from lessons from her stepfather, painter F. Garnier, whom her mother Marie Gilbert had taken as a second husband in August 1620. The earliest dated paintings by L. Moillon are from 1629. Fourteen paintings by her are mentioned in an inventory of goods taken after her mother’s death in August 1630 – a number that indicates a long period of sustained activity up to that point, or in other words a precocious talent. Some fifty paintings are known of today, amongst which over thirty are signed in calligraphic, cursive letters “Louise Moillon”. The dated works, largely on panel, range from 1629 to 1644 or 1645. It appears that the artist’s production slowed significantly following her marriage to wine merchant Étienne Girardot in November 1640. L. Moillon died in Paris in 1696 at the age of 86.

Amongst L. Moillon’s still lifes, perhaps the most seductive is Coupe de cerises, prunes et melon (around 1633), acquired by the Louvre in 1982. Above all, it stands out as a colourist tour de force, with its various and veracious reds. The artist has successfully captured the subtle cadences of nature. Dominant red tones are set in contrast with the greens of the leaves, which stand silhouetted against the cherries behind them. The tension at work between these complimentary colours, red and green, is resolved in the general balance of the composition: the principal mass of the cherries is flanked by two secondary motifs, plums to the left, a melon on the right. The pale blue of the plums and the orange of the melon temper the contrasts and allow the eye some respite. They impart something classic and intemporal to the image despite its naturalism. It is a soothing, meditative work, and impels one to linger before it. Like Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), L. Moillon intentionally restricted the frame of her creation, obsessively returning to a pyramidal composition in which a dominant motif was tempered by one or two others which border it, and to details more traced than painted, using an extremely fine brush, such that the artist could capture the subtlety of nature’s most ephemeral, beautiful, tones.

L. Moillon’s paintings were highly celebrated during her lifetime: five of her works are included in an inventory of the collections of King Charles I of England. A great connoisseur of 17th-century painting among the royalty, this truly was a badge of honour. The French Minister of Finance, Claude de Bullion, also possessed at least three of L. Moillon’s still lifes. However, from the end of the 17th century her name is much less cited, and thus most of her paintings have not entered the collections of major museums but are held in private hands. A rediscovery began to take place in 1934 when the Peintres de la réalité exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris presented two still lifes by the artist from the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse. Since the 1950s, the work of art historians such as Charles Sterling, Michel Faré, Dominique Alsina, Claudia Salvi and Lesley Stevenson has led to an increase in L. Moillon’s renown.