Fruit and Baltimore Oriole

A half watermelon with vivid red flesh and black seeds sits at the center of a white plate with a silver knife, ringed by a yellow pineapple, red and green grapes, dark plums, pink peaches and a partially peeled orange on a long wooden table, with pumpkins or squash below and a window at the left opening onto a winding river in a green valley. A yellow-and-black Baltimore oriole perches on the handle of a yellow basket of mixed fruit behind the watermelon, amid white and pink flowers. Wagguno, an American painter known only by this name and the reverse inscription “Painted by Wagguno, 1858,” worked in the naive tradition associated with Lambertville, New Jersey; his only documented canvas was recorded by the Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch collection, who bought it in 1950 and bequeathed it to the National Gallery of Art in 1980. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.