The Dresden doctor Heinrich Kühn moved to Innsbruck in 1888 for health reasons and as a photographer became one of the most important representatives of Pictorialism in the German-speaking world. In still life he was able to ideally realise his photographic artistic design goals, as the arranged motif could be controlled and precisely adjusted to the lighting situation. This made it possible to reproduce a broad and at the same time differentiated spectrum of tonal values, as an abstract counterpart to the real variety of colours and lighting moods. The still life with tomatoes on a tin plate is one of his most successful motifs in this genre, in which the light reflections on the various surfaces are particularly appealing.
