Fruit Piece

Provenance

Edgar Ames, Esq., St. Louis, 1860; to Lucy Semple Ames, 1861; by descent through family. Sold, Barridoff Galleries, Portland, ME, August 6, 1997, lot 183, as Fruit. With Vance Jordan Fine Art, New York, by 2000; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2001.

Exhibition history

Saint Louis, Western Academy of Art, First Annual Exhibition, 1860, cat. 303. Art Institute of Chicago, Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine, Nov. 10, 2013–Jan. 27, 2014, cat. 62; Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Feb. 22–May 18, 2014. St. Louis Art Museum, Art Along the Rivers: A Bicentennial Celebration, Oct. 3, 2021–Jan. 9, 2022, cat. 34 (ill.).

Publications

Sarah E. Kelly, “Fruit Piece,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 30, no. 1 (2004): 12–13 (ill.). Judith A. Barter, "True to the Senses and False in Its Essence: Still–Life and Trompe l'Oeil Painting in Victorian America," Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 31, no. 1 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2005): 37 (ill.). Judith Barter et al., Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 2013), 85–87, 226, cat. 62, fig. 6 (ill.). Judith A. Barter, Elizabeth McGoey, et al., American Silver in the Art Institute of Chicago (Yale University Press, 2016), 18, fig. 8 (ill.).

Quick Overview

Artist: Hannah Brown Skeele (American, 1829–1901)
Date: 1860
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 50.8 × 60.6 cm (20 × 23 7/8 in.)
Type: Painting
Classification: painting
Place: Saint Louis
Department: Arts of the Americas
Credit line: Purchased with funds provided by Charles C. Haffner, III, Mrs. Harold T. Martin, Mrs. Herbert A Vance, and Jill Burnside Zeno; through prior acquisition of the George F. Harding Collection
Accession no.: 2001.6

Data retrieved from the Art Institute of Chicago on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.