Fruit Still Life with Chinese Export Basket

Fruit Still Life with Chinese Export Basket is a feast of early American still-life painting by James Peale, the younger brother of Charles Willson Peale, who turned in his later years from portrait to the still life he had taught himself to love. Painted in 1824, the year of Lafayette’s triumphant return to the young republic, the picture heaps peaches, grapes and plums around a fine blue-and-white Chinese export basket — a prized possession in any early American household — with the crisp, enameled clarity that makes Peale’s fruit look almost tangible. The peaches, each with its blush and its shadow, are among the most delightful passages in American painting of the period, and the whole canvas glows with the satisfaction of a country newly aware of its own abundance. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.