Apples in Art
Since apples have been cultivated around the world for thousands of years, they have also been featured extensively in amateur, fine, folk, religious, political, and advertising artwork. Below you can find examples of the apple’s role in the visual arts world.
Arm of Eve
Albrecht Dürer, 1507
Cleveland Museum of Art
Preparatory drawing for Dürer’s life-size Adam and Eve panels, now housed in the Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Presidential Election Cartoon
1840
William Henry Harrison was derided as a senile old man, who would be content to live out his days in a log cabin with a barrel of hard cider. Harrison adopted hard cider and a log cabin as emblems of his campaign, symbolizing his support among common people.
Rainstorm—Cider Mill at Redding, Connecticut
George Harvey, c. 1840
Metropolitan Museum of Art
This painting depicts a traditional hand-operated two-screw press in Western Connecticut, mid-19th century.
Cider Making
William Sydney Mount, c. 1840
Metropolitan Museum of Art
This detailed depiction of mid-19th century cider making was painted in the context of the famous”hard cider ” presidential election campaign of 1840.
Apple Tree (Hanging Scroll)
Kiitsu Suzuki, 1855
Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Teizo Kimura Collection
Apple Cider Press
Bronze Sculpture, Thomas Shields Clark, 1894
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
USDA Pomological Watercolors
The USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection is one of the most unique collections in the Rare and Special Collections of the National Agricultural Library (NAL). As a historic botanical resource, it documents new fruit and nut varieties, and specimens introduced by USDA plant explorers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The collection spans the years 1886 to 1942. The majority of the paintings were created between 1894 and 1916. The plant specimens represented by these artworks originated in 29 countries and 51 states and territories in the U.S. There are 7,497 watercolor paintings, 87 line drawings, and 79 wax models created by approximately 21 artists.
Apple Crate Advertising
Many examples exist of early-20th century advertisements found on crates of fresh New Jersey apples.
