Still Life: Flowers and Fruit

Severin Roesen

1850–55 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

Over a dozen varieties of fresh flowers and fruit are featured in this visual spectacle. Nineteenth-century improvements in cultivation and shipping practices enabled the extravagant assortment, which includes a tropical pineapple and a pomegranate that allude to the nation’s future bounty. A German immigrant, Roesen fled the revolutions of 1848 for the promises of America. He exhibited in New York in the 1850s, sending eleven paintings to the American Art-Union’s Free Gallery exhibitions between 1848 and 1852. In 1863 he settled in Pennsylvania, where his patrons included lumber industry moguls who reveled in the perceived limitlessness of American resources.

Artist

Severin Roesen

Date

1850–55

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Purchase, Bequest of Charles Allen Munn, by exchange, Fosburgh Fund Inc. and Mr. and Mrs. J. William Middendorf II Gifts, and Henry G. Keasbey Bequest, 1967