Following studies at the Philadelphia School of Industrial Design and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Charles Sheeler traveled to Europe, where he had a transformative encounter with the revolutionary works of Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. Upon his return, he took up photography to earn a living and soon became the first American modernist to integrate painting, photography, and drawing practices into a Precisionist vision of American architecture, technology, and crafts.

Sheeler’s "Still Life" contributes to a long tradition of tabletop still life paintings that evoke the senses of sight and, vicariously, smell, touch, and taste. This deceptively simple composition depicts common household objects—one plate, two glass vessels, and three fruits—that are artfully arranged to emphasize formal issues of perspective, form, color, and light. Sheeler’s photographic realism anchors these gravity-defying objects that otherwise would slide off the table.