Signed and dated lower left: “Chas. Storer / 1883.” Stretcher bears Frost and Adams label (Boston canvas preparers). Original ornate gilt-plaster frame.

Exhibited: National Academy of Design, New York, 1883, No. 56.

Ripe Enough to Gather appears to be the first painting Charles Storer exhibited in a major American exhibition venue. It was his only painting exhibited at the National Academy of Design. He was 66 years old at the time of the exhibition and he gave his address as 181 Devonshire Street, Boston. The price of the painting at the National Academy of Design was $225, which was perhaps the equivalent of $10,000 today. Winslow Homer’s prices at the NAD between 1880 and 1883 were $300 – $2,500. The still-life painter Joseph Decker’s works at the NAD in 1884 were priced at $50 – $100.

Charles Storer appears to have been a late-bloomer. Although he was a member of the Boston Art Club starting in 1885—when he was 68 years old, he did not exhibit there until the year of his resignation (1896) when he moved to Providence, R. I. From his address at 25 Conrad Building, Providence he submitted The Queen of the Orchids to the 1896 Boston Art Club watercolor exhibition, English Pheasants and Fruit to the December 1897-January 1897 oil painting exhibition, Choice Orchids to the 1898 oil painting exhibition, and Pansies to the 1898 watercolor exhibition. He was still painting orchids as late as 1900 (Still Life of Orchids in an Urn collection of Spanierman Gallery, New York), and seems to have made still-life his exclusive subject in art.