It struck me one day. In French, we call a still life  a nature morte , which translates literally 'dead nature'. To me, the words that I have spoken since childhood carry this brutal finality, the uncomfortable idea of decay and extinction. In English, still life  sounds gentler and suspended. Same paintings, two very different sensations. Sarah Miriam Peale, Still Life with Watermelon , 1822, oil on panel, 46.4 x 67 cm. Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA. Italian, Spanish,