William Harnett

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: William Michael Harnett

(born Aug. 10, 1848, Clonakilty, Ire. — died Oct. 29, 1892, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Irish-born U.S. still-life painter. Brought to Philadelphia as a child, he was trained as an engraver and soon developed outstanding skill in trompe l'oeil painting. While traveling in Europe he painted his best-known work, After the Hunt (1885). In 1886 he settled in New York City. His work, popular with the public, was generally dismissed by critics. After a long period of disrepute, his works again were appreciated and sought after when mid-20th-century critics recognized Harnett's outstanding skill at abstract composition.

For more information on William Michael Harnett, visit Britannica.com.

Search unanswered questions...

Browse: Unanswered questions | Most-recent questions | Reference library

5min Related Video: William Harnett

Top

Art Encyclopedia: William Michael Harnett

Top

(b Clonakilty, Co. Cork, Ireland, 10 Aug 1848; d New York, 29 Oct 1892). American painter. He was brought up in a family of artisans in Philadelphia and was trained as an engraver of silverware. After studying at the Pennsylvania Academy, he moved to New York in 1869 and worked as an engraver while continuing his studies at the Cooper Union. In 1875 he exhibited at the National Academy of Design while supporting himself by painting small, precise still-lifes. He returned to Philadelphia in 1876 and by 1880 had saved enough for a European tour. He settled in Munich, working there and in Paris for six years and returning permanently to New York in 1886.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Biography: William Michael Harnett

Top

The American painter William Michael Harnett (1848-1892) was his era's leading trompe l'oeil still-life painter.

William Harnett was born on Aug. 10, 1848, in County Cork, Ireland, and taken to Philadelphia by his parents when he was a child. Harnett learned the engraver's trade and found employment as a silver engraver. When he was 19, he attended night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Two years later he moved to New York, where he worked for jewelry firms during the day and studied painting at the National Academy of Design and the Cooper Union at night.

A still-life painter from the start, Harnett was not tormented by dreams of artistic grandeur. In an age when many portrait painters wished to paint historical subjects, he was happy to paint his cabbage and, according to legend, eat it too. His first picture of a pipe and a beer mug not only was accepted at the National Academy's annual exhibition but was sold for a welcome $50. His future course was clear: he had hit upon a popular vein, and with rate single-mindedness he stayed with it all his life.

Harnett returned to Philadelphia and, between 1873 and 1879, sold enough pictures to go to Europe. His work was appreciated by the Europeans. While abroad he painted After the Hunt. His greatest success, it is a startling, realistic rendering of an old barn door, dead game birds, a hunting horn, a shotgun, a powder horn, and a Tyrolean hat.

In 1886 Harnett returned to New York and exhibited The Old Violin at the National Academy that year. From then on he lived a moderately successful, if uneventful, life; his pictures sold steadily, though at modest prices.

Harnett's art was undoubtedly influenced by his Philadelphia predecessor Raphael Peale, but he carried American trompe l'oeil (as this style, which seeks to "fool the eye, " is known) to new heights. He probably found inspiration for some of his effects in the 17th-century Dutch still lifes he had seen abroad.

Harnett's work, and that of other painters in the trompe l'oeil school, has an appeal beyond art: people who do not respond to other kinds of painting like it. Trompe l'oeil is intriguing because it is fascinatingly close to visual reality. Harnett gave the nonart public pegs on a wall so real that people tried to hang their hats on them, and dollar bills that they tried to pick up. The seemingly naive Americanism of his work is one of his greatest illusions, but he played all his tricks with the consummate skill of a magician. On his death on Oct. 29, 1892, he left few pictures and very little money.

Biography

Harnett was born in Clonakilty, County Cork, Ireland during the time of the potato famine. Shortly after his birth his family emigrated to America, settling in Philadelphia. Becoming a United States citizen in 1868, he made a living as a young man by engraving designs on table silver, while also taking night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later, in New York, at Cooper Union and at the National Academy of Design. His first known oil painting, a still life, dates from 1874.

The style of trompe l'oeil painting that Harnett developed was distinctive and inspired many imitators,^[1] but it was not without precedent. A number of 17th century Dutch painters, Pieter Claesz. for instance, had specialized in tabletop still life of astonishing verisimilitude. Raphaelle Peale, working in Philadelphia in the early 19th century, pioneered the form in America. What sets Harnett's work apart, besides his enormous skill, is his interest in depicting objects not usually made the subject of a painting.

Harnett painted musical instruments, hanging game, and tankards, but also painted the unconventional Golden Horseshoe (1886), a single rusted horseshoe shown nailed to a board. He painted a casual jumble of second-hand books set on top of a crate, Job Lot, Cheap (1878), as well as firearms and even paper currency. His works sold well, but they were more likely to be found hanging in a tavern or a business office than in a museum, as they did not conform to contemporary notions of high art.

Harnett spent the years 1880–1886 in Europe,^[1] staying in Munich from 1881 until early 1885.^[2] Harnett's best-known paintings, the four versions of After The Hunt, were painted between 1883 and 1885. Each is an imposing composition of hunting equipment and dead game, hanging on a door with ornate hinges at the right and keyhole plate at the left. These paintings, like the horseshoe or currency depictions mentioned earlier, are especially effective as trompe l'oeil because the objects occupy a shallow space, meaning that the illusion is not spoiled by parallax shift if the viewer moves.

Overall, Harnett's work is most comparable to that of the slightly younger John F. Peto. The two artists knew each other, and a comparison can be made between two paintings featuring violins. Harnett's Music and Good Luck from 1888 shows the violin hanging upright on a door with ornate hinges and with a slightly torn piece of sheet music behind it. The elements are arranged in a stable, deliberate manner. Peto's 1890 painting shows the violin hanging askew, as well as chipped and worn, with one string broken. The sheet music is dog-eared and torn around the edges, and placed haphazardly behind the instrument. The hinges are less ornate, and one is broken. Harnett's objects show signs of use but are well preserved, while Peto's more humble objects are nearly used up.

Crippling rheumatism plagued Harnett in his last years, reducing the number but not the quality of his paintings.^[3] He died in New York City in 1892. Other artists who painted similar compositions in Harnett's wake include his contemporary John Haberle and successors such as Otis Kaye and Jefferson David Chalfant.

Collections

Harnett's work is in collections in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, New York), the Amon Carter Museum (Texas), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Harvard University Art Museums, the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia), the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Joslyn Art Museum (Nebraska), the Los Angeles County Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art (California), Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Madrid), the Toledo Museum of Art (Ohio), and the Wadsworth Atheneum (Connecticut), among others.

Gallery

A study table, painting by William Harnett, 1882	Still life violin and music, 1888	With the "Staats Zeitung", 1890	Der treue Colt
Öl auf Leinwand	After the Hunt, 1883	After the Hunt, 1884	After the Hunt, 1885

Notes

^ ^a ^b Frankenstein 1970, p. 56.
^ Frankenstein 1970, p. 72.
^ Frankenstein 1970, p. 92.

References

Frankenstein, Alfred. The Reality of Appearance: The Trompe l'Oeil Tradition in American Painting. Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society Ltd, 1970. ISBN 0-8212-0357-6

		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Art Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more
		Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more
		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "William Harnett". Read more