Still Life—Strawberries, Nuts, &c.

Strawberries, nuts and tableware stand in precise balance on the tabletop — a large glass urn, a Chinese porcelain bowl made for the American market, each surface and reflection rendered with meticulous control. Raphaelle Peale, eldest son of the painter Charles Willson Peale, was one of the first artists in the United States to specialize in still life, and in works like this he absorbed the lessons of seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes while turning them to an American purpose: the imported luxury goods testify to the power and prosperity of the young republic. The strawberries may have been grown out of season in the greenhouses, or hothouses, of the family farm outside Philadelphia. The painting passed from a Philadelphia collector through the Graham family and was given to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1991 by Jamee J. and Marshall Field. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.