This relocation provided Bernard with a slightly larger room where he could practice painting. At 16, Bernard was already a very gifted artist, painting interior scenes and views of his grandparents' houses in

Lille.

At this young age, he joined the Atelier Cormon as one of its youngest members. During his time at the Atelier, he met Toulouse-Lautrec, Louis Anquetin, and Vincent van Gogh. Bernard developed a close friendship and intellectual relationship with van Gogh. His daring technique and interest in the Avant-Garde movement impressed his older peers.

This still-life was painted in 1886 after Bernard returned from his first trip to Brittany. Following this journey, his practice evolved from an Impressionist, sometimes Pointillist, technique to a more distinctive style characterized by a close approach to patterns and contours.

This work is one of a few rare early still-lifes that Bernard executed upon his return from Brittany. The palette of ochre and red emphasizes the decorative pattern of the table and the background, which is rendered in the same colors. The artist placed the flowers and the orange as if they merged with the

motif. The flowers are rendered with thick impasto, and the orange is outlined with blue contours to highlight the volume and texture of the fruit. The background creates a liminal space, detaching the objects from a specific location and giving them an abstract character.

The orange reappeared in other still-lifes from 1887, such as "Nature morte à l’orange" (1887), now at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The fruit served as the perfect object for continuing Bernard's research on volume and decorative patterns. The composition is also reminiscent of "Vase de Fleurs et tasse,"

with two objects displayed on a table, now at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. This still-life is a rare piece that lays the early groundwork for the future development of Bernard's Synthetic style.