SUSTENANCE

The artists represented in this section approached the subject of food production from a variety of angles. Painters working for wealthy patrons in the 17th and 18th centuries conveyed the comforts of abundance through mouthwatering still-life paintings and scenes of tranquil agricultural labor and markets that tied sustenance to land use and commerce. These images usually avoided the realities of such work, which became more interesting to 19th-century artists, who explored labor from a class-conscious perspective. Working in diverse contexts, artists appealed to and challenged associations with growing, selling and making food