Samuel Marsden Brookes immigrated from England to Illinois with his family as a youth. In 1839, he took drawing lessons, his only known art instruction, from two portrait painters in Chicago. He began earning his living as an itinerant portrait painter in 1841, traveling to small towns seeking commissions. By 1855 he had also produced a series of paintings for the State Historical Society in Wisconsin.

Brookes departed for San Francisco in April 1862. He initially supported himself as a portraitist, but rapidly became the state’s preeminent still-life painter. His first California subject was Still Life (The Larder). Influenced by 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting in the variety of game it depicts, it also acknowledged the artist’s new home through the inclusion of prominently placed California quail. He sold the painting to a San Francisco patron almost immediately after it was completed. In 1872, he purchased it back from an auction of the collector’s estate and resold it to Edwin Crocker.

The abundance of game and dark, somber tone of Still Life (The Larder), which he adopted from European prototypes, largely disappeared in his later works. It was these works of fruit and fish that would ultimately earn Brookes national recognition. His ability to render the slippery sheen of fish was considered unparalleled, and he was known to travel the state on fishing trips to catch his models.