Featuring rarely seen works by major American artists—including James Peale, John F. Peto, Thomas Hart Benton, Georgia O’Keeffe and Andrew Wyeth—this traveling exhibition, at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art from April 22 to July 30, 2017, celebrates the history of still-life painting in the United States. Drawn from a private collection, these pictures represent an extraordinary range of subject matter, from fruit and flowers to images of guns and game.

Among the major works from the Hevrdejs Collection in the exhibition are John F. Peto’s vibrant and haunting trompe l’oeil painting, The Writer’s Table: A Precarious Moment (1892) and Andrew Wyeth’s strikingly somber Christina’s Teapot (1968).

Frank J. Hevrdejs is a nationally-recognized collector of American art, pursuing his passion for over 30 years. A Life Trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and longtime chairman of its Collections Committee, Frank has pledged this extraordinary collection to the MFAH. He and his wife, Michelle, are now sharing it with visitors in Memphis and Tacoma, Washington, before it returns to Houston.