Highlights from the Art Museum's lush new still life show

It's fitting that the Philadelphia Museum of Art should open its new, gorge-your-eyes exhibit on American still life now, as America lays in for Thanksgiving. Ripe abundance and unbridled consumption are two themes in the surprisingly gorgeous feast of American plenty.

Posh flowers overspill their vases, mouthwatering fruits overflow their bowls, exotic and domestic animals (including a showstopping house cat) abound.

The 175-year retrospective, "Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life," even starts on a peep-show note, with Philly master Raphaelle Peale's "Venus Rising from the Sea - A Deception."

A woman's pretty foot and upraised arm peek out from behind a scrim. "Everyone wants to lift the veil to see the naked lady," said curator Mark D. Mitchell.

There's science here, too - especially in the show's first chronological chapter of American still life (1795-1845), where artworks by John James Audubon, various Peale family painters and others catalog the animals and plants of the land.

(Fun fact to impress your birder friends: The green-headed adolescent parrot in the middle of Audubon's "Carolina Parrot" tells you that the scene is set in February, when tweens of the now-extinct species went through a green-on-top phase.)

And there's industry - especially in the exhibit's 1905-1950 chapter, as America's railroads and a new sense of "being on the clock" become subject matter for more still-life artists than you'd think. Note to train buffs: Images of the New York Central Railroad's 20th Century Limited locomotive put in an impressive whistle stop here.

But it's those unexpectedly voluptuous fruit and flower paintings from the dawn of the industrial era - and the birth of America's consumer economy - that steal the show, in the exhibit's 1845-1890 grouping.

Museum signage calls this section of the show "Indulging."

"Everything about those objects, the flowers as well as the fruits, says, 'I am perfect. Enjoy me.' " Mitchell said. "You are the consumer here to experience their perfection."

If you were under the impression that food porn began with Saveur, or maybe with Instagram, Robert Spear Dunning's 1871 painting "Cherries," William McCloskey's 1889 "Wrapped Oranges" and the swelling cornucopia of George Henry Hall's 1858 "September" are here to prove you wrong, by a century and a half.

"There is amorousness and love and sensuality in these paintings," Mitchell said. "I kind of describe it as intoxication - and there's so much drinking in the paintings that it helps.

"Bite down - those things are going to be delicious."

The grand centerpiece of the indulgence grouping (and the show as a whole) is the oil painting "Flower Still Life with Bird's Nest," by Pennsylvania artist Severin Roesen, who worked mainly out of Williamsport.

Don't let the dull-as-dishwater title put you off. The recently acquired, 40-by-32-inch floral profusion has quickly become a patron (and benefactor) favorite in the Art Museum's permanent collection.

Mitchell said that viewers swoon first over the flowers. "Then they start finding the bugs."

"I cannot even tell you," he said, "how often I see people taking selfies with this painting - ridiculous." (Photos are prohibited in the still-life exhibit, though.)

Another highlight nearby, by another Philadelphian, is Edward A. Goodes' "Fishbowl Fantasy," with flowers, feathers, fat goldfish, pink kid gloves and other luxe, mid-19th-century trappings.

But look closer: Reflected in the fishbowl are two fashionable women strolling together, one in blue and one in gray. People in Goodes' day, just after the Civil War, would have recognized the symbolism as the sign of a reunited country.

His painting also tells a love story, complete with lovebirds (look for them perched atop a box in the lower left corner) and love letters (beside the box).

"Fishbowl Fantasy" is one of several paintings in the show that are staged in special settings - in this case, a parlor - where Mitchell hopes people will stop to talk about unexpected details they notice in the artworks.

(For a game of compare-and-contrast, circle back after seeing Roy Lichtenstein's 1974 "Still Life with Goldfish," which is part of a Pop Art coda to the show - along with Andy Warhol's 1964 "Brillo Boxes" - in the exhibit's last gallery.)

The 1885 William Michael Harnett painting "After the Hunt," which famously hung in a lower Manhattan saloon, offers another stop-and-talk opp - hanging here in a gallery space outfitted with saloon-style club chairs where people can take a load off and swap art thoughts.

"We want people to explore together," Mitchell said. "Bring a friend. Please. Bring a date."

And keep your combined eyes peeled, just around the corner from the saloon, for De Scott Evans' painting "Cat in a Crate."

The showstopping 19th-century kitty, shockingly lifelike and glowering from within what appears to be a 3-D wooden box, "has an uncanny presence" that stops museumgoers in their tracks, Mitchell said.

"It's been a point of great delight for me to see people turn the corner and do a double take."

Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, through Jan 10., timed tickets $20-$25 (under 13 free), 215-763-8100, philamuseum.org.