Still Life: Peaches and Grapes

Woodside probably received his training from Philadelphia sign painter Matthew Pratt or one of Pratt’s business partners. In 1805, Woodside opened his own studio in Philadelphia, advertising his services as an ornamental or sign painter. He aspired to less mundane genres, however, and tried his hand at emblematic and patriotic works, animal scenes, miniatures, and copies after English engravings. This work and its companion, "Still Life: Peaches, Apple, and Pear" (41.152.2), are among Woodside’s few known still lifes and represent his best efforts as a painter. His arrangement of peaches and grapes in a spare setting bears the stylistic imprint of the Peale family, who established a still-life tradition in Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century.