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Wrapped Oranges
Object Details
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Date
1889
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Object Type
Paintings
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Medium
Oil on canvas
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Dimensions
12 x 16 in.
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Inscriptions
Recto:
signed and dated l.r.: W.J.McCLOSKEY N.Y. 1889 COPYRIGHT
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Credit Line
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Acquisition in memory of Katrine Deakins, Trustee, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 1961-1985
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Accession Number
1985.251
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Copyright
Public domain
Object Description
Between 1877 and 1882, McCloskey trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins, who encouraged his students to make still-life paintings of fruit to better understand relationships of color and light. But McCloskey painted oranges only after moving to Los Angeles, where the citrus industry was rapidly growing. He opened a studio there with his wife, the painter Alberta Binford McCloskey, and embarked on a series of small canvases that portray oranges wrapped in wax paper and laid out on polished mahogany tables, including Wrapped Oranges. Wax-paper wrapping became popular in the 1880s as a new way of preventing fruits from rotting during shipping. With wax paper, oranges, once a luxury commodity, became more broadly accessible and affordable to Americans across the country.
—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)
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Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture and CuisineFebruary 22–May 18, 2014
This mouthwatering exhibition of 60 paintings explores the art and culture of food, investigating the many meanings and interpretations of dining in America, from celebrating the pleasures of eating to making a statement on the country’s social values.
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American Still LifeFebruary 14–August 16, 2015
Organized in celebration of a recent acquisition, American Still Life highlights the ability of 19th and 20th-century American artists to celebrate the ordinary through their paintings, whether trompe l’oeil masters or modernist photographers.
Additional details
Location: On view
See more by William J. McCloskey
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Philadelphia-born artist William McCloskey’s training mainly consisted of drawing the human figure, but throughout his career he primarily focused on painting still lifes. One of his instructors and a well-known artist, Thomas Eakins, told him to, “Paint an orange. After you have done it, introduce a white thing … try to get the light and color.” These words impacted McCloskey. He went on to paint tissue-wrapped oranges throughout his life, like in this artwork, Wrapped Oranges.
In the center of the gold-framed, 12-by-16 inch canvas, there are six oranges on a on a highly-reflective, wood table. They are shown at close range in a very shallow space. The top two thirds of the background is dark black, and the bottom third of the painting is a plain, shiny wood surface. A light source comes from out of the frame on the left side. The six round oranges on the table are arranged left to right, some wrapped in white tissue while others are bare.
The first, left-most fruit is a bright orange with the top left of the sphere a little more yellow, reflecting the light. The second orange is completely wrapped in white tissue paper. McCloskey masterfully paints the tissue paper so thin and crisp that you can practically feel the texture of the paper in your hand. The veil of white mutes the orange, which again the artist excellently captures, under the delicate tissue paper. Oranges three and four are stacked directly on top of each other. The top fruit is only partially covered by tissue paper, allowing you to see bright orange in two spots. The open edges of the tissue paper reach up toward the top of the painting, breaking up the black background. The orange on the bottom is unwrapped, dazzling with color and hints of its bumpy texture. This bottom one is closest to us. The next, fifth citrus fruit to the right is wrapped in ripped tissue; through the large rip we see the darker, circular flower stalk of the blossom visible. Parts of the ripped tissue paper extend out toward us. The sixth and final, right-most orange, is entirely wrapped. The edges of the crinkled tissue are pinched and pointing out toward us, but the thin white still reveals the muted orange underneath.
McCloskey painted these fruits as if they were individual portraits, giving each orange its own personality.
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What is a still life?
How might an artist employ specific compositional devices to elicit a particular experience for the viewer?
What factors might influence the objects an artist chooses to depict and the way they represent them?
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Grades 4–12
After creating still life in the activity for all levels, pair students to write a response to one another’s work. Have them consider the compositional and medium choices, as well as the context, that each student provided for the objects.
All Levels
Choose two or three examples of still lifes created with similar objects and ask students to compare the works. What decisions did each artist make in the way they treated and contextualized the object(s)? Offer students the opportunity to create a still life of their own using similar objects.
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