Basket of Apples
Oil on canvas
Levi Wells Prentice
1890
Gift of Mrs. Victor Cole, Fayetteville, NY, 1972
Prentice’s favorite still life subject was the apple. He depicted the fruit in both interior and exterior scenes, placing them in a tin pail, a silver bowl, a paper bag, and of course, spilling from a bushel basket. Prentice painted at least forty paintings using apples as his theme.
Levi Wells Prentice was born in Harrisburg, Warren County, NY in 1851. He became a house painter and furniture designer and builder, as well as a self-taught painter. He primarily painted landscapes of the Adirondack Mountains during the 1870s when he lived in Syracuse and Buffalo. After he moved to Manhattan in the early 1880s he concentrated on still lifes which he painted until his death in 1935.