A Feast for the Eyes: Sumptuous Still Lifes
A Feast for the Eyes invites you to revel in lush expressions of beauty, sustenance, and abundance spanning 150 years.
Severin Roesen (American, b. Prussia, ca. 1815–ca. 1872). Fruit and Watermelon, Wine and Champagne, ca. 1850–70. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Hudson River Museum. Gift of Shelley and Felice Bergman, 2023 (2023.15.1). Photo: Steven Paneccasio.
Still-life paintings are deceptively straightforward. They depict groups of objects as their main subject matter—flowers, food, drink, and the vessels that contain them—yet they are often imbued with symbolic meaning and offer a new way of looking at everyday items. A Feast for the Eyes invites you to revel in lush expressions of beauty, sustenance, and abundance spanning 150 years.
As a category of art, still life traces its lineage to seventeenth-century Europe, particularly the Dutch Old Masters, whose paintings of consumable and material comforts were highly valued by their clientele. Artists not only showed off their skill in capturing light, shadow, and color of the surfaces and forms in their arrangements, but often included objects and details imbued with symbolic meaning. For example, nature’s bounty of cut flowers, perhaps beginning to wilt, or perishable food, attracting insects, signified wealth but also hinted at mortality and decay.
In the nineteenth century, many American artists, often from or trained in Europe, specialized in still life. Among the earliest paintings in the exhibition, the two masterful works by Severin Roesen demonstrate the role of still life in articulating visual and sensual pleasure in consumer goods in mid-nineteenth-century America. In the early twentieth century, Albert Herter painted the gladioli he grew in his garden, creating the illusion of cut stems inside a glass vase, reminiscent of French flower paintings he would have seen when he lived in Paris.
In reaction to nonrepresentational art movements popular in the aftermath of World War II, many painters in the 1970s returned to realism and explored still life. Photorealists such as Audrey Flack painted directly from photos of their compositions, striving to create the appearance, not of everyday life, but of a photograph. They shared earlier still-life artists’ fascination with the play of light on reflective surfaces, which offered the opportunity to display the mastery of their craft. Jane Wilson concentrated instead on a painterly luminosity, softening sharp edges and simplifying forms.
Overall, these examples of a time-honored genre ask us to consider the meanings conveyed by ordinary and extraordinary objects, when seen through the keen eyes and produced with the brush-wielding hands of artists of different times and sensibilities.
Exhibitions are made possible by assistance provided by the County of Westchester.
Programs for the exhibition have been generously sponsored, in part, by Shelley and Felice Bergman.
Featured Artists
Adelheid Dietrich • Audrey Flack • George Henry Hall • Albert Herter • Levi Wells Prentice • Severin Roesen • Ben Schonzeit • Jane Wilson
Selected objects
Severin Roesen (American, b. Prussia, ca. 1815–ca. 1872). Flowers in a Glass Bowl, ca. 1850–70. Oil on canvas. On extended loan from Shelley and Felice Bergman. Photo: Steven Paneccasio.
George Henry Hall (American, 1825–1913). Summer, 1870. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Hudson River Museum. Gift of Shelley and Felice Bergman, 2023 (2023.15.3). Photo: Steven Paneccasio.
Severin Roesen (American, b. Prussia, ca. 1815–ca. 1872). Fruit and Watermelon, Wine and Champagne, ca. 1850–70. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Hudson River Museum. Gift of Shelley and Felice Bergman, 2023 (2023.15.1). Photo: Steven Paneccasio.
Adelheid Dietrich (German, 1827–1891). Spring Bouquet, 1874. Oil on canvas mounted to Masonite. Collection of the Hudson River Museum. Gift of Shelley and Felice Bergman, 2023 (2023.15.5). Photo: Steven Paneccasio.
Levi Wells Prentice (American, 1851–1935). Fruit on a Tabletop, late nineteenth century. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Hudson River Museum. Gift of Shelley and Felice Bergman, 2023 (2023.15.2). Photo: Steven Paneccasio.
Levi Wells Prentice (American, 1851–1935). Peaches in a Basket (Bushels of Peaches), late nineteenth century. Oil on canvas. On extended loan from Shelley and Felice Bergman. Photo: Steven Paneccasio.
Albert Herter (American, 1871–1950). Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, ca. 1910. Oil on board. Collection of the Hudson River Museum. Gift of Mrs. Harriet C. Herter, 1981 (81.6). Photo: Steven Paneccasio.
Audrey Flack (American, 1931–2024). A Pear to Heade and Heal, 1983. Oil and acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of Louis K. Meisel Gallery.
Ben Schonzeit (American, b. 1942). Fred + Ginger Rose, 1997. Acrylic on linen. Courtesy of Louis K. Meisel Gallery.
Jane Wilson (American, 1924–2015). Turkish Tulips, 2003. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Hudson River Museum. Gift of Theodore Kaplan and Henry Tobin, 2023 (2023.1.1).
