In this humorous still life, King pokes fun at popular taste and laments the plight of the arts in America. A masterful example of trompe l’oeil illusion, the painting depicts a cupboard filled with the possessions of an ambitious and well-educated but financially unsuccessful painter. Brushes, drafting tools, treatises on art, and a cast of the head of the Apollo Belvedere, the celebrated antique sculpture, are crammed in next to stacks of unpaid bills, letters from parsimonious patrons…
