This delicate and pristine theorem painting is one of about five pieces identified as the work of Emma Jane Cady of East Chatham, New York. Theorem paintings are created with the aid of cut stencils, and Cady’s are remarkable for their technical control, balanced composition, and clarity. By the time Cady made this still life at the end of the nineteenth century, theorem painting had long since passed from favor. But as her work demonstrates, the technique could still be employed to produce an enduring result that defied the fleeting nature of popular trends. By using both watercolors and gouache, Cady achieved an interesting interplay between light and shadow. And by pouncing with a textured cloth rather than a stiff brush, she created a soft gradation of color that recalls the effect of chromolithography. The application of mica flakes to the glass compote enhances the sense of transparency and emphasizes the comparative solidity of the fruit.

When her work was discovered in the 1930s, the artist was known by name but incorrectly identified with New Lebanon, New York. As a result, it was not until 1978, and the serendipitous discovery of an inscribed painting, that she was correctly placed in East Chatham. Subsequently a good deal of information was unearthed about Cady. Her family migrated from Connecticut to Columbia County, New York, in the mid-eighteenth century. Her father, Norman J. Cady, was a farmer, and she herself was remembered by surviving acquaintances to have loved outdoor work, though census records list her occupation as “housework.” Cady never married, and after her parents’ deaths she moved first to the home of a nephew and then, about 1920, to Grass Lake, Michigan, where she lived with her sister and her sister’s family until her death in 1933.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Fruit in Glass Compote," in American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 501.