Still Life

Details

William Michael Harnett (1848-1892)
Still Life
signed with monogram and dated 'WMHarnett/Munchen/1883' (upper left)
oil on panel
8 x 10¼ in. (20.3 x 27.3 cm.)

Provenance

The Downtown Gallery, New York.
[With]Victor D. Spark, New York.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1959.

Literature

A. Frankenstein, After the Hunt: William Harnett and Other American Still Life Painters, 1870-1900, Berkeley, California, 1953, pp. 169-70.
A. Frankenstein, The Reality of Appearance, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1970, pp. 78-79, fig. 42, illustrated.

Exhibited

Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, and elsewhere, The Reality of Appearance, March 24-October 31, 1970, no. 42.

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Lot Essay

Alfred Frankenstein writes of Sporting Still Life and Still Life, "These two pictures seem to have been intended as a pair. They are identical in size, and while both retain Harnett's devotion to the deep niche at the right, they are balance compositionally in certain other respects." He goes on to write of Sporting Still Life, "Harnett delights in pipes and cigars, but [Sporting Still Life] is teh only known painting by him to represent cigarettes, which in his time were on the race, sinful side." (The Reality of Appearance: The Trump L'Oeil Tradition in American Painting, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1970, p. 78)

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