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Baked Pears in Duane Park

1870s
Not on view
Writing in the 1880s, one New Yorker fondly reminisced about the black women who stood in the streets tempting passersby with a baked pear "carried around in a deep-glazed earthenware dish, floating deliciously in a warm bath of home-made syrup." Despite the writer’s nostalgia, the baked pear sellers suffered the same lot as the rest of the city’s hucksters—a group largely comprised of impoverished blacks and white women and children who struggled to survive in the lowest rungs of society. The location depicted is Duane Street Park, at the intersection of Duane and Hudson, just north of the fashionable third ward.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Baked Pears in Duane Park
  • Artist: William P. Chappel (American, 1801–1878)
  • Date: 1870s
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on slate paper
  • Dimensions: 6 x 9 1/8 in. (15.2 x 23.2 cm)
  • Credit Line: The Edward W. C. Arnold Collection of New York Prints, Maps, and Pictures, Bequest of Edward W. C. Arnold, 1954
  • Object Number: 54.90.494
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

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Powder Horn, Horn (cow), lead, American
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Buttermilk Pedlar, William P. Chappel American, Oil on slate paper, American
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Man and Two Women (Henderson Ledger Artist B), Frank Henderson Native American, Pencil, colored pencil, and ink on paper, Arapaho
Man and Two Women (Henderson Ledger Artist B)
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The Boot Black, William P. Chappel American, Oil on slate paper, American
The Boot Black
William P. Chappel
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