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STILL LIFE WITH PEACHES

Creator: William Mason Brown (Attributed)
Offered by: Kelly Kinzle Antiques

Description
William Mason Brown (1828-1898) was a second generation Hudson River School artist but later gained fame for his meticulously detailed still lifes. Born in Troy, NY where he began his study of painting, he moved to Newark, NJ in 1850. In 1858 he moved to Brooklyn and began to concentrate on his still life works. His fame came when he sold the painting A Basket of Peaches Upset to William Schaus, a New York art dealer for $2000, a very high price at the time. It was reproduced through chromolithography which helped his work reach a much broader audience. Schaus also operated an art supply store at 749 Broadway, and his store stencil is on the reverse of this canvas. Currier & Ives also bought and lithographed several of his still life paintings.

Brown became an important artist in Brooklyn in the mid-19th century. He was a founder of the Brooklyn Art Association and exhibited at the National Academy of Design. This fine depiction of peaches laying on the ground gave Brown the opportunity to portray the many colorations of the fruit, each overlaid with peach fuzz and surrounded by realistically painted peach leaves. A luscious painting suggesting the ripeness of summer.

There is a label from the Braus Galleries of New York on the back of the frame. Braus Galleries operated in the early 20th century on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue in New York.

There is an old small patch repair in the area of the background on the proper left upper corner in the area of the background and does not involve any area of fruit.

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