Although little is known about this painting, it might have been created as a record of the accomplishment of modern horticulture. Such still lifes of specific agricultural products were common in the nineteenth century. Vernier’s botanically accurate rendering of the pear skin, stem, and leaves, however, seems unusual in the context of the dramatic lighting, which was used by other American still-life painters of the period.
According to the inscription on the back of the canvas, the large fruit was grown by Charles Nova in Los Angeles in 1864, but efforts to document a farmer with that name as then residing in Los Angeles have proved futile.
The enormous weight of the pear--four pounds--must have caused quite a stir. California was perceived as a garden paradise, and the pear’s size demonstrated the richness of the land. In the late 1870s, when the railroad linking the East and Southern California was completed, railroad companies issued posters extolling the fecundity of the land; one lithograph, depicting an array of fruit, referred to California as the "cornucopia of the world."
