Fruit and Flower Piece is one of the few known paintings by William Sharp, an artist who worked primarily as a printmaker making illustrating botanical publications. Sharp emigrated from England and in the late 1830s settled in Boston where he was one of the first to experiment with color lithography. Fruit and Flower Piece reflects the aesthetic of Sharp's botanical training: each object is carefully drawn with little modeling and flat coloring, emphasizing a linear elegance rather than a painterly approach. The asymmetrical composition and landscape background are derived from seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish still lifes.
The flowers and fruits in this lush image hail from a variety of climates and seasons. In a gilded French porcelain vase, Sharp included morning glories, tulips, lilies, foxglove, roses, dahlias, and phlox, as well as two large clusters of grapes. The vase itself is decorated with a landscape that echoes the scene in the background. A basket to the right holds strawberries, currants, and cherries; a peach and perhaps some plums are piled in a white pressed glass dish nearby. More peaches and plums, as well as apples, an exotic pineapple, and a bunch of bananas surround these containers on the marble tabletop. Such bountiful presentations were popular with American still-life painters at this time, suggesting and prosperity abundance to a Victorian audience.

Karen Quinn

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