Free Sample - Try One

In this deceptive painting, DeScott Evans (who also went by the names David Scott Evans and S. S. Evans) invites the viewer to snatch an almond from what appears to be a wall-mounted box. Tricky paintings like these are known as "trompe l’oeil" (French for "deceive the eye") because they fooled viewers into thinking they were looking at three-dimensional objects, not two-dimensional paintings. Evans made at least nine paintings of various nuts very similar to this one, speaking to the popularity of this type of work. He had a very successful career as a portrait painter, having trained in Paris with a leading French master William Bouguereau. Evans likely preferred using the name S. S. Evans for trompe l’oeil paintings because his fashionable portrait-sitters might have looked down on the low brow humor of this kind of work.