Apples

Born in 1829, Robert Spear Dunning was raised in Fall River, Massachusetts, and studied at the National Academy of Design under Daniel Huntington. Around 1864 Dunning shifted his emphasis from portraiture to still life and was a founding member of the Fall River Evening Drawing School—an unique establishment for a small New England town. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design from 1850-1880, at the American Art Union in 1850, as well as at the Boston Art Club. Dunning’s work frequently features abundant displays of fruit, often accompanied by sumptuously decorated household objects. In the present work, "Dunning departed from his opulent Victorian fruit pieces, and turned his composition into a moral commentary. The abundantly filled bag spills forth apples, sharing its bounty with the tattered straw hat; thus contrasting the believed relationship between bounty, plenty, and wealth to that of want, need, and poverty, and the joy of charity and giving." (J.W. Tottis, in National Gallery of Art, American Paintings from the Manoogian Collection, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1989, p. 102)