William J. McCloskey 1859 - 1941

Private Collection (sold: Sotheby's, New York, December 3, 1987, lot 10, illustrated in color)
Berry-Hill Galleries, New York (acquired at the above sale)
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1987

In the late 1870s, as a young student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, McCloskey studied under two prominent figures from the Philadelphia art community, Christian Schussele and Thomas Eakins. Schussele and Eakins encouraged their students to participate in still-life classes in order to develop and enhance their skills painting light and texture. Eakins instructed his students, "Paint an orange. After you have it done, introduce a white thing... Take an egg or an orange, a piece of black cloth, and a piece of white paper and try to get the light and color" (Maria Chamberlin-Hellman, "Thomas Eakins as Teacher," Ph.D. diss., New York, 1981, p. 267). Oranges, in addition to lemons and apples, proved to be endlessly fascinating for McCloskey, who mostly presented the subjects at close range and confined to shallow space. In Wrapped Oranges on a Tabletop, McCloskey arranges oranges on top of a highly polished reflecting surface, their brightness highlighted by an invisible light source against a dark Prussian-blue velvet backdrop. Four of the oranges are wrapped or delicately twisted in thin, finely detailed tissue-paper, a device typically used during this period to preserve fruit during interstate shipping. The trompe-l'oeil effect produced by the palpable texture of the brilliant white tissue-paper, variously thin where torn and thick where twisted, adds a layer of complexity to this seemingly simple still-life.