Still Life with Fruit

Roesen left Germany and the turmoil of continental revolutions for New York in 1848 and brought with him the style of still life painting that had developed in Düsseldorf, influenced by Dutch art of the 17th century. The artist found an accepting audience in his adopted country for his exuberant arrangements of fruit and flowers with botanical accuracy, rich color, and painstaking detail. They represent the prevailing sense of abundance and optimism that characterized America in the years before the Civil War. In the late 1850s, he began to tour a number of Pennsylvania cities including Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Huntingdon, in search of commissions, finally settling in the lumbering center of Williamsport around 1860. There he operated a successful studio at the intersection of Market and Third Streets which has been described as “a rendezvous for many of [Williamsport’s] well-known citizens, who would...watch him paint.”

This painting, the history of which can be traced to an old Williamsport collection, is typical of many of Roesen’s oval formatted panels featuring grapes, strawberries, apples, peaches, and citrus fruit offered up on a vein-marble table top. The artist was especially renowned for his remarkably naturalistic depictions of grape vine leaves, showing signs of decay, even insect damage. Roesen frequently incorporated grape vine tendrils into his signature as in our example.