Still Life

January 19, 2013 – March 23, 2014

Dutch, 17th Century, Balthasar van der Ast, Dutch, 1593/94-1657, Still Life with Shells and Fruit, c. 1630s, Oil on panel, The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1937.491
Luis Egidio Melendez, Spanish, 1716-1780, Still Life: Pigeons, Onions, Bread, and Kitchen Utensils, c. 1772, Oil on canvas, The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 1938.256
Charles Ethan Porter, American, 1850-1923, Apples on the Ground, c.1880, Oil on canvas, Gift of Dorothy Clark Archibald, 1999.16.1
Wayne Thiebaud, American, born 1920, Half Cakes, 1961, Oil on canvas, The Schnakenberg Fund, 1962.267

Still life paintings suggest both the good life and that life is short. Paintings of inert, everyday objects juxtapose the pleasures of taste and smell with the fleeting nature of time. Artists often attached symbolic meaning to objects: a book might represent knowledge and a butterfly the human soul. This exhibition invited visitors to explore four centuries of European and American painting and then create their own tabletop still life or create a poem about an object.

Still Life

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