William Harnett ( ) American Realist Trome L’oeil

William Harnett Irish-American painter who practiced a trompe l'oeil (literally, "fool the eye") style of realistic painting. His still lifes of ordinary objects, arranged on a ledge or hanging from a nail, are painted in such a way that the painting can be mistaken for the objects themselves.

Harnett, William Mr. Hulings' Rack Picture 1888 Oil on canvas 76.2 x 63.5 cm (30 x 25 in.) Private collection Trompe L’oeil - to fool the eye Though Trompe l’oeil had been around sinc the reeks, Harnett used this style to evoke not only awe at the sleight of hand beign used, but nostaliga for things handmade, in an era of booming industrialism. This may have been partly accident, as machine- made objects were very hard to paint convincingly.

Tompe Leoil Mr. Hulings' Rack Picture - detail 1888 Oil on canvas 76.2 x 63.5 cm (30 x 25 in.) Private collection Everything is actual size, and the flatness of the board corresponds to the flatness of the painting, so that the illusion is perfect. The marks of pencil and chalk on the board look like chalk and pencil, not oil paint; each grain line in the cheap wood and fuzzy fiber in the torn paper edges is there

Cigar Box, Pitcher, New York Herald 1880 Oil on canvas 9 1/2 x 7 3/4 in. Private collection Preferring the worn and old to the new and shiny, he also avoided the richness of blown glass or the precious items in a seventeenth century Dutch or Spanish still life. His paintings are not emblems of material glory. The objects in them are not antiques, but bric a brac: in a word, junk. They are what the new rich consign to the attic as they rise, and eventually throw out. An exception to his refusal of newness was printed media not only Treasury bills but souvenirs of the enormous mass of handbills, chromos, sheet music, newspapers, pamphlets, and the rest that were pouring from America's mechanical presses.

Peto, John The Poor Man's Store 1885 Oil on canvas 90.4 x 64.8 cm (36 x 25 1/2 in.) Museum of Fine Arts, Bosto John Peto was a fellow painter of Harnetts. When they painted their pipes, horseshoes, worn boxes, dented candlesticks, and rusty hinged cupboard doors, few of these "models" were more than fifty years old. They all bear the marks of recent social use. But the implication is that the society that used them is vanishing or has gone, and has become an object of nostalgia.

The Faithful Colt 1890 Oil on canvas 22 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut The work of these illusionists suggests a vanished age to us in the 1990s, but the real point is that it also suggested one to their audience. Nostalgia, in the America of the 1880s, was a new kind of emotion. It consisted of a warm but anxious regard for a past which was still notionally within reach, but was perceived - correctly - as slipping away. This was the past of a less complicated and accelerated America, sparsely but sufficiently endowed with handmade objects rather than glutted with machine made ones.

The Old Violin 1886, National Gallery of Art, Washington The public was fascinated by Harnett’s most famous work, The Old Violin, a trompe l'oeil still life created in People would reach out to touch the violin or try to grasp the envelope to determine if the objects were real or painted. Thanks to a widely distributed chromolithograph, The Old Violin would become an icon of American art, inspiring a group of illusionist painters— including John F. Peto—to make their own versions. To find out more about Harnett’s “The Old Violin” and how it was created, go to the National Gallery of Art Presentation. National Gallery of Art Presentation