Every one of these peaches has a flaw, and one is even split open. They lie on the ground, not on a clean table. These “ugly” details made the work controversial in its day. Even though we think of beauty in still-life as perfect arrangements of idealized fruit and flowers, Joseph Decker saw beauty in how things actually are. He was influenced by the well-known English writer John Ruskin who said, “Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”