Little known in his own time and nearly forgotten for much of ours, Charles Ethan Porter has gained attention as one of the finest still life painters of his era. Born into poverty in Hartford, Connecticut, Porter became one of the first African Americans to attend the National Academy of Design in New York. Instructed in classes alongside other future stars, such as J. Alden Weir and Albert Pinkham Ryder, he also studied privately with Joseph Oriel Eaton, an academician who taught William Merritt Chase. In 1881, Porter went to London and Paris for further training, carrying letters of introduction from Mark Twain and other Hartford luminaries. Porter is best known for his fruit and flower still-life compositions, and his landscapes in oil and watercolor. The meticulous realism of his early work allowed for later adaptation of Barbizon and impressionist styles. His faithful representation of detail together with his rich color and fluid brushwork became even more sophisticated in his mature work of the 1880s. Frederic E. Church, a patron and frequent visitor to Porter’s Hartford studio, commended his work and asserted that there was no finer