« Koch's fruit still lifes clearly reach back across the times of Picasso, Cézanne, and Chardin to the seventeenth century, and he appears to allude to both Dutch and Southern European artistic traditions. Showcasing fruits on a plinth of stone or wood was an international custom at the time, but the hilly landscape in the background, with trees swaying in the wind, feels specifically Italian. The feeling is heightened by the steel-blue sky and the sharply contrasting white cloud – a far cry from the damp, pale skies and thin grey clouds that loomed over the flat landscapes of Dutch painters. Koch may have seen Italian Baroque landscapes in museums in Florence in the late 1930s. However, his fruits are so highly detailed and distinctly rendered that they almost become individual characters; they are, possible symbolism included, more in keeping with Dutch realist painting practices. The small dark spots on the fruit and the broken twigs and withering leaves plainly remind the viewers of their own mortality ».

Jacob and Emmy Mees, Rotterdam;
Thence by descent