Melons+and+Morning+Glories

Date: 1813
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1967/1967.39.2_1a.jpg?itok=xvq8j66p width="336" height="270" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/melons-and-morning-glories-19311"]] || Title: **Melons and Morning Glories**

Artist: **Raphaelle Peale** Born: Annapolis, Maryland 1774 Died: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1825

Medium: on canvas Dimensions: 20 3/4 x 25 3/4 in. (52.6 x 65.4 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Paul Mellon

Accession: 1967.39.2 || Raphaelle Peale's father, Charles Willson Peale, urged his son to paint portraits instead of still lifes, which brought an artist less prestige and fewer commissions. But still lifes suited Raphaelle, who also worked as a taxidermist. He painted this melon as if it were a body opened up for examination, detailing its fluids and flesh so that the painting suggests life, fertility, and death, all at once.
 * Exhibition Label: **

Artist Biography SAAM Collection Page
 *  Links: **