Fruit Still Life with Chinese Export Basket

James Peale

National Gallery of Art

A speckled yellow apple and bunches of purple and green grapes are arranged next to an intricately pierced white bowl piled with more apples and grapes in this almost square still life painting. The objects sit on a sand-colored stone ledge, and the fruit gleams in bright light coming from the upper left. Sitting to the left of the basket, the yellow apple has brown spots and a worm hole near the top. In front of it, the green grapes partially cascade over the front edge of the ledge. The purple grapes lie in the shadow behind the apple. The white bowl has a wide, flaring mouth rimmed with dark blue, and sits to our right of center. It is pierced with four rows of narrowly spaced, undulating waves that spread out from a central eight-sided medallion. One red and two more yellow apples, one of which also has a small wormhole, sit along the lip of the bowl. They are topped by a cluster of green grapes framed by green leaves and a stem that angles into the upper right corner of the painting. The background is silvery gray to our right, where the light falls, and is in black shadow in the upper left.