James Peale
Still Life, 1825

Description
Still Life represents a bowl of grapes with additional clusters of grapes and three apples arranged in a shallow space. The largest part of the composition is devoted to the ceramic bowl, which is placed to the right of center and is filled with several bunches of green and dark-purple grapes. The pale-blue bowl is of a neoclassical design, with a round base and flaring sides. The concave side of the bowl is decorated with a series of vertically oriented, stylized blue leaves alternating with smaller gold ones. A narrow band at the base of the bowl is ornamented with horizontally arranged blue and gold diamonds. The top edge of that band and the rim of the bowl are trimmed with a gold bead. The grapes in the bowl are still attached to their vines, and three large grape leaves are carefully delineated. Many of the green grapes at left and in the back of the bowl are tinged with red. Peale toned each grape from dark at center to light at the outer edge to suggest volume, and he added touches of white to convey the illusion of translucence. Two tendrils at the tops of the vines spiral in elaborate arabesques. Light comes from the space on the viewer’s side of the scene, illuminating the grapes in the front and at the left side of the bowl and casting the back and right into shadow. A secondary light shines on the back right of the composition.

To the right and behind the bowl is a small red apple. Two larger apples rest to the left of the bowl; the one on the far left is mostly red with some yellow, and the other is mostly yellow with touches of red. A bunch of dark-purple grapes and another of red grapes rest behind those two apples, and a small group of dark-purple grapes is visible in the negative space under the left rim of the bowl and the overhanging green grapes. Another strand of grapes is arranged in front of the pair of apples, forming a concave curve, with one or two grapes hanging over the edge at each end of the strand. A single grape on a separate stem rests on the wooden surface.

The bowl and fruit are arranged on a reddish-brown board, which may be a shelf or a tabletop. Its polished surface faintly reflects the objects. The background is dark below and above the board and lightens to gray at the center-right.

Analysis
Still Life typifies James Peale’s work in its elements, arrangement, and lighting. Fruit and vegetables were the primary items Peale included in his still-life paintings, most of which he executed between 1819 and 1830. As in this painting, the items are characteristically arranged in an orderly, though asymmetrical, fashion in a bowl resting on a table or shelf placed low in the composition. Shapes and variations on shapes often repeat within a painting. Here, for instance, the rounded shapes of the apples, grapes, and bowl set against the linearity of the board present a contrast with the jagged edges of the grape leaves. The fruit overflowing the ceramic bowl on all sides reflects Peale’s preference for compositions that were abundant rather than spare. The artist almost seems to tempt the viewer with the bright, succulent fruit; in fact, the one grape plucked from the loose stem and resting on the board suggests that someone yielded to temptation. Peale often included two light sources in his still-life images, as he did here, where a strong light enters from the front and a weaker one from the back.

James Peale frequently introduced imperfections to his still-life objects. In this example, the single apple at right is beginning to rot where it has a small blemish. In the foreground at left, the grapes forming an arch frame a single grape that is still on its separate stem. On the adjoining empty stem, the pale green center is still moist, indicating that the missing grape was just plucked and eaten. Similar devices can be seen in Peale’s Apples and Grapes in a Pierced Bowl (about 1820, private collection).1 In that work, a bruise on a yellow apple at left has turned brown, and a red apple at right has been partly peeled. Whether by decay or consumption, some of the objects in Peale’s still-life paintings allude to impermanence.

Figure 1. James Peale, Still Life: Apples, Grapes, Pear, about 1822-25, oil on wood, 18 3/16 x 26 3/8 in. (46.2 x 67 cm), Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, New York, Museum purchase in memory of William C. Murray, 78.45.


Sometimes, he painted the same object more than once. For example, the ceramic bowl in this Still Life is depicted in at least one other Peale composition.2 In both Worcester’s painting and Still Life: Apples, Grapes, Pear (fig. 1), he placed the bowl to the right of the center of the composition with fruit in and around it. In the latter work, the fruit partially obscures the front of the bowl, and Peale has added a pear to the mix. The two paintings are similar in their asymmetrical balance, lighting, and in the shelf or table on which the objects rest. Both works were created on panel, a support that is typical of Peale’s still-life paintings of the mid-1820s. Such paintings served as models for his daughters, nephew Rubens Peale, and great nieces, sometimes making attributions difficult.3 A nearly identical bowl to the one that appears in Worcester’s painting was also painted by his daughter Sarah Miriam Peale (1800-1885) in her Still Life (1822, private collection).4 The leaves decorating the surface of the bowl appear broader on Sarah’s bowl, the gold banding is slightly different, and there are no diamonds on the lower register.

Approximately fifteen still lifes are known with inscriptions on the reverse such as that found on the Worcester painting: "Painted by James Peale/in the 76 year of his age 1825."5 Inscriptions such as this are unusual on paintings, but they were commonplace on needlework. For example, each of several Philadelphia embroideries dated between 1816 and 1839 representing a basket overflowing with flowers and grapes is inscribed, "Mary Murphy’s work done in the 13th/year of her age Kensington 1830."6 The inscriptions on James Peale’s still-life paintings are thought to be in his own hand, indicating not only who painted each one and when but also the artist’s age at the time. Whereas the needlework inscriptions signify youthful accomplishment, Peale’s inscriptions on his paintings demonstrate that he remained a strong artist into old age.

Notes
1. Simmons 1996, 218.

2. Linda Crocker Simmons, "James Peale (1749–1831): Still Life: Apples, Grapes, Pear," in Schweizer 1989, 29 and 219 n. 1. For similar compositions that feature a pierced bowl, see the Peale still-life paintings in the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York (fig. 1), the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A fourth example was sold at Christie’s, New York, April 1981, sale cat. no. 5049, lot 32.

3. Ibid., 219 n. 2.

4. Miller 1996a, [150].

5. Elam 1967, 118.

6. For contemporary examples from Philadelphia, see Ring 1993, II, 374–77. A British sampler in the Worcester Art Museum bears this embroidered inscription: "Ann Rich her Work in the Tenth Year/of her Age/1772."