Feeding My Mother: Comfort and Laughter in the Kitchen as a Daughter Lives with Her Mom's Memory Loss

Inventing American Still Life, 1800–1960, offers a fresh look at the myriad ways that American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries—both familiar names and recently rediscovered artists—approached the subject of still-life painting. A stunning array of works, some never before published, are beautifully illustrated in more than 250 color images. Four thematic essays address the connections between still life and other aspects of American culture, including literature and philosophy; the intersection of still-life painting, natural-history illustration, and commercial photography; the Philadelphia region’s defining impact and lasting influence on American still life; and the reception of still life by American critics and art historians from its earliest days to the present. Among the works featured are Raphaelle Peale’s celebrated Blackberries (c. 1813), Severin Roesen’s majestic Flower Still Life with Bird’s Nest (1853), William Michael Harnett’s landmark trompe l’oeil painting After the Hunt (1885), and Charles Sheeler’s modern masterpiece Rolling Power (1939).