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Last Chance

Our traveling exhibition Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum closes today at the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago.

If you don't catch the show today, then you might be able to see it at its next stop, the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington, beginning November 23.

Young America presents about fifty major paintings and sculptures that trace the transformation of the colonies into nationhood. These rare artworks from the 1760s through the 1870s reveal the growing self-awareness and optimism of the new nation.

Severin Roesen's Still Life with Fruit conveys a sense of abundance. Sumptuous grapes, peaches, berries, watermelon, even a pineapple, spill over from a wicker basket to the marble tabletop. Twisting grapevines and whimsical tendrils visually extend the composition beyond the table. This lavish yet seasonally improbable still life emphasizes America's bounty and mid-century optimism, qualities that appealed to the country's rising middle class, eager for decorative displays to grace their dining rooms.

Source: Gwen Everett. Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Severin Roesen, 1815 Germany–after 1872 USA, Still Life with Fruit, 1852, oil, 34 x 44 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Maria Alice Murphy in memory of her brother Col. Edward J. Murphy, Jr. and museum purchase through the Director's Discretionary Fund.