Still-Life with Onions and Partridges

Purkyně's paintings, more particularly his still-lifes, were in their time harshly criticized, in the first place by the poet and art critic Jan Neruda. In his view they lacked enobling idealism; he branded their "coarse mannerism" and objected to their "intentional naturalist spite". This still-life, in which Purkyně modelled, as was his want, the volume of objects with conspicuous pastose colours, brilliantly revealing their different surface structures, was painted over an older picture, portrait of an old man. It is impossible to accurately identify his face - it may have been a portrait of the painter's father, Jan Evangelista Purkyně.