Oil on stretched canvas, ready to hang.

Signed certificate of authenticity.

The English word cherry derives from Old Northern French or Norman cherise from the Latin cerasum, referring to an ancient Greek region, Kerasous near Giresun, Turkey, from which cherries were first thought to be exported to Europe.

The indigenous range of the sweet cherry extends through most of Europe, western Asia, and parts of northern Africa, and the fruit has been consumed throughout its range since prehistoric times. A cultivated cherry is recorded as having been brought to Rome from northeastern Anatolia in 72 BC.

Cherries were introduced into England at Teynham, near Sittingbourne in Kent, by order of Henry VIII, who had tasted them in Flanders.

Cherries arrived in North America early in the settlement of Brooklyn, New York. Trades people leased or purchased land to plant orchards and produce gardens.

Many cherries are allied to the subgenus, which is distinguished by having the flowers in small corymbs of several together, and by having smooth fruit with only a weak groove along one side, or no groove.

The subgenus is native to the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with two species in America, three in Europe, and the remainder in Asia. Other cherry fruits are borne on racemes and called bird cherries.

In this painting I’ve tried to capture the beautiful red hues that cherries projects when clustered together in an oven clay earth bowl under a natural soft light source.