Still Life: Fruit

Severin Roesen

1855 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

Bubbling Champagne and over a dozen varieties of fresh 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 heavily seeded melons 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 relished the perceived limitlessness of American resources.

Artist

Severin Roesen

Date

1855

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Rogers Fund, 1963