Chaïm Soutine’s Still Life with Rayfish, was painted in 1923 when he was thirty years old. At this point in Soutine’s life, he had been living in Paris for around a decade. One might expect Soutine to be adjusted to Parisian life at this point, particularly since he was only moving from Belarus or Lithuania, which is of course, another part of Europe. However much Soutine enjoyed living with other artists, he was still not able to adjust to differences in society in France. The oil painting Still Life with Rayfish, is a representation of how Soutine feels as a foreigner for so long.
The first major element in the piece is that of the rayfish. It has three distinct features: the large cut, the facial expression, and being pinned to what