Edwin Deakin: California Painter of the Picturesque surveys the life and career of Edwin Deakin (18381923), an English-born painter who resided in San Francisco and Berkeley, California, while producing highly regarded examples of early California art. This is the first book to chronicle work from Deakin's entire range of genres, from still-lifes to nature paintings to his series of California mission paintings. Scott A. Shields, Ph.D., the book's author, is the chief curator of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA. The introduction is by Alfred C. Harrison Jr., president of the North Point Gallery in San Francisco. Developed by the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California, in concert with an exhibition of the artist's paintings, opening January 2008. By Scott A. Shields, Ph.D.; introduction by Alfred C. Harrison Jr. 120 page smyth-sewn casebound book, with jacket. Size: 10 by 8 3/4 inches. Includes over 80 full-color reproductions, biographical chronology, list of artwo

"Presenting, interpreting, and celebrating the world-renowned and the lesser-known California artists who have uniquely defined and redefined the still life, this volume offers an exploration of the sensual pleasures, the aesthetic challenges, and the intellectual and perceptual associations of a century of art through the prism of a single genre."--BOOK JACKET.

The Fruits of Empire is a history of American expansion through the lens of art and food. In the decades after the Civil War, Americans consumed an unprecedented amount of fruit as it grew more accessible with advancements in refrigeration and transportation technologies. This excitement for fruit manifested in an explosion of fruit imagery within still life paintings, prints, trade cards, and more. Images of fruit labor and consumption by immigrants and people of color also gained visibility, merging alongside the efforts of expansionists to assimilate land and, in some cases, people into the national body. Divided into five chapters on visual images of the grape, orange, watermelon, banana, and pineapple, this book demonstrates how representations of fruit struck the nerve of the nation’s most heated debates over land, race, and citizenship in the age of high imperialism.