The Art Gallery at the Athenaeum contains one of America’s unique collections of 19th century American paintings. Each week we will feature a different work on this page. We hope educators will use this link as a tool to enrich their art curriculum. Vermonters and other citizens throughout the nation can now visit our gallery in this new, intimate, and informative way.
The text describing each painting was written by Mark D. Mitchell, Assistant Curator of Nineteenth-Century Art at the National Academy Museum. The digital images were prepared by Robert Jenks of Jenks Studio of Photography in St. Johnsbury, VT.
Please note that the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum prohibits the use of images from its collection in public exhibition, broadcast, electronic reproduction or publication in any form without prior written permission from the institution. If you would like to reproduce any of the Art Gallery images in any form, contact Irwin Gelber at 748-8291, extension 307.
William Mason Brown (1828-1898), American
Raspberries, 1873
OIL ON CANVAS, 10 x 12 inches
Gift of Horace Fairbanks
Like many American artists of the period, William Mason Brown found his niche as a still life painter during the 186os only after trying his hand at portraiture and landscape painting. Brown's lush depictions of overturned baskets and abundant piles of ripe fruit were particularly appreciated in his day for their meticulous sensitivity to the fruits' textures and patterns.
Humble still life subjects, of which Raspberries is an excellent example, enjoyed immense popularity among American painters and collectors during the mid-nineteenth century. Fine color print reproductions of Brown's compositions sold widely, demonstrating their broad appeal to wealthy and middle-class collectors throughout the country. In an era when agriculture was rapidly being superseded by industry as the nation's primary economic force, however, these generous helpings of ripe fruit offered nostalgic allegories of the nation's agricultural bounty, giving no hint of the labor involved in their growth or harvest.