$149,000
John Frederick Peto (American, 1854-1907) Still Life with Books and Pipe Signed and dated "J. F. PETO 87" l.l. Oil on canvas, 10 x 12 in. (25.4 x 30.5 cm), framed. Condition: Losses, retouch, varnish inconsistencies, craquelure with flaking and alligatoring, surface grime. N.B. American Realist painter John Frederick Peto is best known for his trompe l'oeil still life paintings of everyday items. His dark palette, choice of objects, and spontaneous seeming arrangements often create an elegiac quality in his work, "instead of sustenance, there is a sense of quiet, inevitable erosion; instead of ripeness and effulgence, wear and tear; not the fullness of time but an anxious sense of its passage and change."(i) A Philadelphia native, Peto enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1877. There, he was greatly influenced by the trompe l'oeil paintings of classmate and friend, William Harnett. By the 1880s, Peto settled in the coastal community of Island Heights, New Jersey, where he lived with his wife, Christine Pearl Smith, and daughter, Helen. I Wilmerding, John. Butler Institute of American Art. www.butlerart.com
Auctioneer:
Skinner
Date:
2006-11-17
