Still Life—Strawberries, Nuts, &c.

A member of a prominent artistic family from Maryland and Pennsylvania, Raphaelle Peale was one of the first painters in the United States to specialize in still life. In this precisely arranged composition, he meticulously rendered the various surfaces and forms of fruits, nuts, and tableware. Influenced by 17th-century Dutch still lifes, Peale featured imported material goods, such as Chinese porcelain made for the American market, a luxury item symbolizing the increasing power and prosperity of the new nation.

The large glass urn may hold strawberries grown out of season in greenhouses, called hothouses, an experiment undertaken at the family’s farm outside of Philadelphia.

Executed in Oil on wood panel, measuring 41.1 × 57.8 cm (16 3/16 × 22 3/4 in.), the surface rewards close looking. Raphaelle Peale builds the composition through layered glazes and a tightly controlled palette, letting cool shadows recede so that the warm, lit passages step forward.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Light hardens into edge, drapery becomes shroud, and the body is staged like an argument about mortality.

Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago now holds the work, where conservators and historians continue to revisit its condition and attribution. Each generation of scholarship adds a layer to how Raphaelle Peale's output from this period is understood.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”