Lemons and Sugar

Peale is perhaps the artist most closely associated with introducing the still life genre of painting into the mainstream of American art in the early years of the nineteenth century. Lemons and Sugar represents his skills in this genre with its serenely organized composition. Peale attracts the viewer’s attention, allowing him to embrace a moment of contemplation and a feeling for the innate beauty possible in simple, everyday objects. The surfaces of the sugar bowl and lemons are filtered through diffused light, as the brushwork disappears into soft gradations of highlight, shadow, and surface texture. The signature and date in the lower left are not the artist’s but were added posthumously, by a dealer or perhaps by a member of the Peale family.