1853-1924.Largely forgotten for most of the 20th century, the German-born Decker is now viewed as one of the finest still-life painters this country has produced. His distinctive style and daringly innovative choice of subject matter initiated controversy in his day, but now show him to be a freethinking painter well ahead of his time. Rather than choosing to focus on the carefully arranged tabletop still-life compositions of food and decorative objects that reigned in the late 19th century, Decker made his debut at the leading exhibitions in the early 1880s by submitting several paintings of vibrantly colored fruit-laden tree boughs, hard-edged and almost photographically realistic. Though his work was not well understood by critics, he gained the patronage of Thomas B. Clarke, then the leading collector of American art.

Decker also painted landscapes, and pursued several other unconventional themes. He kept a pet squirrel, Bonnie, who became the subject of a number of significant works. He also created some unusual portraits of young children, painting them on artist's palettes and incorporating the thumbholes as mouths. By 1890, the radical style of Decker's early still lifes had given way to progressively more impressionistic, soft-focus, poetic renderings of fruit or candy on tabletops, closer to the prevailing taste of the time.