While living there in the early months of 1929, he painted a series of still lifes featuring calla lilies, leaves, mushrooms, eggplant, endive, garlic cloves, eggs, as well as a variety of different flowers and fruit. The series is among his most homogenous in that objects are outlined in black and placed in the center of the composition, where they stand out in silhouette usually before a maroon colored background.

As he related in a letter of February 7th, 1929 to his friend Rebecca Strand, Hartley hoped that this straightforward presentation would reveal the paintings "as an immediate experience & not by thought or reflective process." The artist employed a monochromatic color scheme in response to the light in his Paris studio. He worked every day from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., the time of day he felt that the light was most acceptable.

In a letter of January 26th Hartley informed Rebecca Strand that his series of still lifes "stand as witness that there is a little light in Paris…it is not to be wondered at that painters [in Paris] have found monochrome to be adequate to all their needs because there is no other kind of light here in winter—and so of course all these canvases of mine are tinged with monochromatic emotions for the reason that pure light does not exist."

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