Two-Tiered Still Life with Fruit and Sunset Landscape

Alternate TitleStill Life

Alternate TitleFruit [Two Tiered]

Artist Severin Roesen (American, born Germany, 1816 - 1872)

Dateca. 1867

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 36 1/4 x 50 1/4 inches (92.08 x 127.64 cm)
Framed: 47 1/4 x 61 3/8 inches (120.02 x 155.89 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the bequest of Dorothy K. Rice

Object numberF91-58

Signedat lower center: "S.Roesen" [the "S" and "R" ligated to form a monogram; period is between letters]

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionA bountiful still life including a variety of fruit - grapes, watermelon, peaches, apples, strawberries, oranges, and currants - is presented on a two-tiered marble shelf. Fruit are shown in or falling out of baskets and compotes. A wooded forest landscape is depicted at left and a distant mountain landscape at right. In the center background is a dramatic cloud-filled sky at sunset.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

[“Exhibition of Roesen’s Paintings”], Lycoming Hotel, Williamsport, Pa., April 29, 1962, no cat.

Gallery Label

Severin Roesen's bountiful still life celebrates and reinforces the popular 19th-century notion that America's natural resources distinguished the nation from the rest of the world. In majestic proportions and a vivid palette, an abundant variety of fruit sits atop a two-tiered marble shelf. The dense forest at left and the mountain landscape at right suggest the diversity and power of the American landscape. Painted around the time of the Civil War, the canvas' dramatic and somewhat threatening sky may suggest the question of whether or not America's unique democracy would prevail.

Roesen fled his revolution-torn German homeland in 1848. By the early 1860s, he settled in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where this painting adorned the dining room of the Lycoming Hotel.

Provenance

To Lycoming Hotel, Williamsport, Pa.;

to (Roan, Cogan Station, Pa., 1969);

to private collection, Williamsport, Pa., c. 1980;

to (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1991 [as Double-tiered Still Life of Fruit]);

to NAMA, 1991.

Published References

Richard B. Stone, “‘Not Quite Forgotten’: A Study of the Williamsport Painter, S. Roesen,” Lycoming Historical Society Proceedings and Papers 9 (November 1951), 33.

“Had Hung at Lycoming: Roesen Paintings Sold by Hotel,” Williamsport (Pa.) Newspaper, March 1969, clipping, NAMA curatorial files.

William H. Gerdts, “The Influence of Ruskin and Pre-Raphaelitism on American Still-Life Painting,” American Art Journal 1 (Fall 1969), 94 (as Still Life).

William H. Gerdts and Russell Burke, American Still Life Painting (New York: Praeger, 1971), 115, 120, 246 (as Still Life).

Alice Thorson, “Eden’s Bounty: Nelson Buys Still Life of American Abundance,” Kansas City Star, November 26, 1992, G1, G10.

Margaret C. Conrads, “Masterful American Still Life Joins Collection,” Calendar (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art), November 1992, 1–2.

Judith Hansen O’Toole, Severin Roesen (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1992), 44, pl. 22, 134 (as Fruit [two tiered]).

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collections. 6^th ed. (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 50, 234 (as Two-Tiered Still Life).

Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1: 464–466, 2: 207.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 164–165.

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