What's For Supper?
Join Smithsonian American Art Museum director Elizabeth Broun for a virtual tour of the painting Vegetable Dinner by Peter Blume.At first glance, Blume's painting seems an informal, if unconventional, still life. But the uptilted table and figures cut off at the edges of the painting signal a modern, almost surreal approach. Several details—the way the smoker's eye just aligns with the landscape outside or the way the vegetable peeler's knife is poised at the thumb—reveal an underlying tension in this domestic scene.
Learn more about this fascinating painting in this Director's Choice tour.
Source: Virginia Mecklenburg. Scenes from American Life: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).
Pictured: Peter Blume, 1906 Russia–1992 USA, Vegetable Dinner, 1927, oil, 25 1/4 x 30 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.
Join Smithsonian American Art Museum director Elizabeth Broun for a virtual tour of the painting Vegetable Dinner by Peter Blume.At first glance, Blume's painting seems an informal, if unconventional, still life. But the uptilted table and figures cut off at the edges of the painting signal a modern, almost surreal approach. Several details—the way the smoker's eye just aligns with the landscape outside or the way the vegetable peeler's knife is poised at the thumb—reveal an underlying tension in this domestic scene.