Still Life with a Figure encapsulates both Balthus’s skill as a draughtsman and his ability to create images of an unsettling and peculiar nature. In this painting a girl draws aside a heavy tapestry and pensively surveys a table covered with a white cloth, adorned with a bowl of apples, wine and bread. While this altar-like scene has references to the Eucharist, the presence of a knife cutting through the bread and the girl’s disconcerted look seem to undercut the implication of religiosity and sacrament, and instead engender a sense of uncertainty and threat. The sense of the uncanny is further heightened by the hyper-real apples which float above and around, rather than within, the elaborate metal bowl. Balthus made the painting in the French countryside after being discharged from the army and having fled Paris following the invasion of the German army, and its suggestions of ambiguity and uncertainty may reflect these turbulent times.