Untitled (Cracked Watermelon)

ca. 1890

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 766

Trained in New York and Paris, Porter was among the first Black American artists to exhibit his work nationally and the only one to specialize in still lifes. This is among his most ambitious paintings. The subject of the watermelon—cultivated by colonists in the Americas from an African gourd—is also significant. Porter chose to paint the fruit when it was increasingly and virulently stereotyped. By reclaiming it artistically, he challenged a common racist trope.

Artwork Details

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Provenance

Title: Untitled (Cracked Watermelon)
Artist: Charles Ethan Porter (1847–1923)
Date: ca. 1890
Geography: Made in Hartford, Connecticut, United States
Culture: American
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 19 1/8 × 28 3/16 in. (48.6 × 71.6 cm)
Credit Line: Purchase, Nancy Dunn Revocable Trust Gift, 2015
Object Number: 2015.118
Curatorial Department: The American Wing

Audio

4036. Charles Ethan Porter, United (Cracked Watermelon), ca. 1890

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JOHANNA OBENDA: When you come to the piece, it feels really straightforward. You see this watermelon, and if you have any familiarity with the still life genre, this looks to line directly up with that. But I think once you start to learn a little bit more this starts to become more interesting.

NARRATOR: Johanna Obenda, curatorial specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

JOHANNA OBENDA: When you start to think about what the watermelon would have symbolized or how it was understood in American culture at the time it becomes much more complicated. It's not just a still life painting of a watermelon.

At this time, the watermelon was a complex crop in American society, something that sat at this intersection of freedom-making and oppression. It was consumed for nourishment and then grown and sold for profit, which is really powerful in an era that was filled with great economic inequality. But the watermelon was also wrapped up into this backlash against the greater economic success of Black Americans.

In the wake of the Civil War, on the heels of Reconstruction, and a nation that's in the throes of a really violent backlash towards emancipation that's wielded through Jim Crow, segregation, and racial terror... I can only imagine, as an African American artist, Porter is navigating this landscape.

I can't help but see the still life as an act of defiance. The way it sits and sort of faces the visitor. It's just so bold.