Feast Your Eyes: On Apples Today

If every collection in the Prints and Photographs Division is an apple tree, full of tantalizing visual treats, then all of our holdings combined make for a vast orchard, ripe with possibility.  My extended food metaphor is no accident, as we are launching a new monthly series here at Picture This entitled Feast Your Eyes. The series will highlight food and drink-related images plucked from the collections by our staff.

The series will invite you to enjoy the breadth and depth of our collections through images reflecting a variety of eras, media, and purposes. We venture the posts will get you thinking about visual images in a new way – and perhaps leave you a bit hungry for more!

The leaves changing to vibrant red and yellows and the nip in the air herald the arrival of fall. This brings me back to the classic apple, my choice for kicking off the series.

Let’s see if I can whet your appetite for the future posts of Feast Your Eyes with these tantalizing bites!

I look at these images from the 19th century and wonder:  Why is the anthropomorphic Apple Sauce so mad at the kids in this 1887 print?  What made the unnamed Civil War soldier pose with an apple on his plate?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The advice given recovering soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital during National Apple Week in 1925 rings true today: “The King of fruits. Eat plenty of them”!

Missouri invites you to “Help yourself to an apple” from their elaborate horticultural exhibit for the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

And finally, the humble apple – a wax one this time – receives in-depth attention from a model painter at the Department of Agriculture.

 

Learn More:

Explore the featured images through the context of related items:

• See the rest of our digitized Bufford’s Fruit Cards to enjoy more fruits turned into people!
• One soldier posed with an apple on a plate.  Other soldiers and family members in the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs held a variety of objects, from musical instruments to weapons, maps and books.
• Check out more images from National Apple Week over the years.
• Explore the rest of the 1904 World’s Fair held in St. Louis.
• Wondering what other activities of the Department of Agriculture were captured by the photographic studio of Harris & Ewing?  (Don’t miss the mechanical chicken!)