Still Life with Fruit and Shells

This painting overflows with life, but also reminds of life’s fragility. There are fruits and flowers; butterflies and dragonflies; a caterpillar, spider, and lizard, as well as a veritable museum of shells from oceans around the world. It is a catalogue of the natural world, in varying states of freshness, decay, and, in the shells, beautiful death—all suspended in time by the artist’s meticulous brushwork.

This painting was once owned by W. G. Constable, curator of paintings at the MFA from 1938 to 1957. It’s tempting to imagine that Constable, who had come to Boston from London, was drawn to the work because it was previously owned by Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th-century novelist and prime minister of the United Kingdom.