Lot Essay
William Michael Harnett's body of work is distinctive in the history of American still-life painting. It is also exemplary of currents in late nineteenth-century American realism. Both still life and realism had important historical precedents and contemporary role models in Philadelphia--most notably the Peale family and the painter Thomas Eakins--and Philadelphia was the city in which Harnett was raised and received his first artistic training. In his survey of American still- life painting, William Gerdts devoted an entire chapter to Harnett and his influence, asserting that his work spawned "the best-known school of American still-life painters," of which Harnett was "the most talented." (Painters of the Humble Truth, Columbia, Missouri, 1981, p. 153)
The art historian Russell Lynes commented on Harnett's position in American art in his rich, contextual commentary of the nineteenth-century American artistic climate and its artistic personalities. Lynes stressed Harnett's contributions to American realism, along with those of the photographer Matthew Brady, the painter Winslow Homer and Harnett's fellow Philadelphian Thomas Eakins: "Neither Brady with his vast slow camera, nor Homer with his eye that stopped movement like a focal-plane shutter, nor Eakins with his eye that pierced the surface to the structure beneath could see an object with the same kind of clarity as a man named William M. Harnett." (The Art-Makers, pp. 375, 377) In its technical finish, one of the hallmarks of Harnett's style, Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box is representative of table-top still lifes created in the late 1870s at the beginning of his mature painting career. Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box contains all of the essential elements of mug, pipe and reading material that can be found in a group of Harnett's paintings, which have been termed "the bachelor still lifes."
But Harnett's works are not merely meaningful in their crystalline representations of the real thing, for the objects within them virtually transcend the nature of average still-life props as compositional elements. For Harnett, still lifes had to possess a narrative element. In a rare interview with the artist from about 1889, conducted by a reporter from the New York News, Harnett stated that he tried to "make the composition tell a story." His paintings allude to scenarios, which were initiated by the objects chosen and their arrangement in space. Cozily nestled in an almost completely tonal setting, the seemingly ordinary objects included in Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box appear to have been momentarily abandoned by their owner: a rustic earthenware mug, the daily paper, a small unidentified volume, discarded matches and a blue canister of tobacco--possibly from Virginia, which provides a singular note of color in an otherwise tonal painting. However, the composition's central focus is a meerschaum pipe, barely lit, which emits curls of smoke that rise up languidly into the air. The viewer can almost smell its aroma, as well as the fragrance of the tobacco blend from the open box.
Although Harnett lived much of his life in a solitary manner, he came from a large family of Irish immigrants who were craftsmen. Born in Ireland in 1848 and raised in Philadelphia, he was one of five children, whose mother was widowed in the early 1860s. Harnett never married and supported his mother for much of his life. He attended the Pennyslvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the oldest academy in the country, from 1866 to 1869. In 1869 he moved to New York, where he briefly studied at the Cooper Union from 1870 until 1871 and then at the National Academy of Design from 1872 until 1876. Most of the classes he attended were conducted in the evening, for between 1865 and 1875, Harnett also supported himself by engraving silver. P.R. Provost has connected the detail work of engraving with a burin, not only to Harnett's extremely detailed surfaces, but also to the diverse techniques he employed to achieve his illusionistic effects, such as minute scratches into the paint layers. ("Burin to Brush: Harnett as an Artisan," William M. Harnett, New York, 1992, p. 133) This manner of rendering the simplest of objects with super clarity relates to his careful observation of form that he learned at the academies. Equally, it relates to the tradition of Philadelphia still-life painters, who depicted humble objects in a tender manner, as in the fruit still lifes of Raphaelle Peale and the dessert tables of John F. Francis.
Harnett's most well-known works are his elaborate trompe l'oeil paintings, especially depictions of masculine objects, such as hunting materials and dead game in the After the Hunt paintings. However, one of his contributions to American still-life painting is his combination of trompe l'oeil effects within the category of the table-top still life. He often composed his works so that the objects within them mirrored life-size scale. Harnett has created surface textures that have a tactile quality, tempting the viewer to reach out and lift an object from its setting. In Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box, we want to pick up the pipe, to read the folded edition of the New York Sun and to touch the rough texture of the earthenware mug, which is described with built-up paint surface. The most conspicuous trompe l'oeil component of the painting is the manner in which he poised the match on the table's edge, since it seems to project out of the picture plane and into the viewer's space.
Signed and dated 1878, Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box falls into the group of masculine table-top still lifes that included smoking, writing and bankers' tables which Harnett painted in the late 1870s. This group of works was widely exhibited in the late 1870s, especially in New York and Philadelphia under titles like Bachelor's Comfort, Materials for a Leisure Hour and Jake's Solace. Referring to works in an 1877 Philadelphia exhibition, William Gerdts has stated that these "paintings enjoyed a rather positive reception, being acclaimed in the catalogue for 'their careful finish and close attention to reality.' Materials for a Quiet Evening was praised as representing 'its title very cozily indeed,'" ("The Artist's Public Face," William M. Harnett, New York, 1992, p. 90) While many of the late 1870s still lifes have not been identified with particular works exhibited, it is probable that Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box--since its scale and finish are comparable to The Social Club (private collection) and is firmly documented to have been exhibited in 1879--may have been included in a late 1870s exhibition.
In its fixation on material goods, this particular asssemblage of objects definitely departs from the earlier American tradition of fruit and floral painting. From about 1878 to 1880, the period in which he created Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box, Harnett abandoned his earlier fruit still lifes, such as A Wooden Basket of Catawba Grapes of 1876 (Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington), to concentrate on his own stylistic and thematic vocabulary. Harnett's best table-top still lifes relate closely to the material world that surrounded him and correspond to the sensibilities of other American realists of the period, both in literature and art. One might compare Harnett's careful delineation of tobacco pouches, pipes, money, inkwells and letters to William Dean Howells' and Henry James' exhaustive descriptions of places and people in American society or to Eakins' detailed scenes of rowing and his highly individualized portraits. John Wilmerding has discussed the late 1870s group of paintings to which Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box belongs as "an index not only of his artistic thought and style but also of many larger currents in American culture during the last third of the nineteenth century." ("Notes of Change," William M. Harnett, New York, 1992, p. 149)
Unlike the earlier American traditions of still life that preceded him, Harnett stressed man-made articles, objects made for material comfort. The paintings of the late 1870s in part reflect America's socio-cultural climate after the Civil War, as it became increasingly preoccupied with business, trade, the production of goods and their consumption.
These material objects displayed in Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box suggest a male presence. The pipe with glowing embers and fresh tobacco in the composition affirm this supposition, since pipe-smoking in the United States was an almost exclusively male activity. The intimation of a masculine presence is significant, since Harnett was a bachelor in the late 1870s and remained so the rest of his life. Pipes in Harnett's pictures can also suggest male sociality, as in the case of The Social Club, made a year later. Like Harnett's focus on material goods, these smoking scenes correspond to trends in contemporary American life. Smoking tables such as The Social Club should be viewed against phenomenon such as the rise of the men's club as a social forum. It was not uncommon for men to obtain membership and frequent several clubs at one time. These "clubmen," as they were known at the time, could very easily represent part of the narrative in The Social Club. In this painting a variety of meerschaum and clay pipes is arranged in diverse positions, as if they belong to individual club members. Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box sets up an alternate story line, which relates to the more solitary aspect of smoking. Its simple meerschaum, paper and mug suggest a bachelor's creature comforts, a refuge from the materialistic American metropolis.
These paintings appealed to male sensibility of the day and must have decorated appropriate male spaces in the house, such as a billiard room. Indeed, as Doreen Bolger has demonstrated, the majority of Harnett's patrons were men who came from wealthy business and mercantile classes. ("Patrons of the Artist," William M. Harnett, New York, 1992, pp. 73-85) Realism in general has been associated with a masculine sensibility that stood in stark contrast to more "feminine" painters, such as Julian Alden Weir who were influenced by French Impressionism. In the early twentieth century, artists looked to realists such as Eakins and Homer to reinvigorate and masculinize American art. At the time of his premature death in 1892, a reporter referred to Harnett as "one of the best known still-life painters in the country." ( New York Times, October 31, 1892, p. 3) He possessed a secure patronage base, commanded large sums for his works and created a unique approach to still-life painting that closely related to his own biography as well as to the American world in which he lived and worked.
Christie's is grateful to Jennifer M. Hardin for contributing this catalogue essay.
The art historian Russell Lynes commented on Harnett's position in American art in his rich, contextual commentary of the nineteenth-century American artistic climate and its artistic personalities. Lynes stressed Harnett's contributions to American realism, along with those of the photographer Matthew Brady, the painter Winslow Homer and Harnett's fellow Philadelphian Thomas Eakins: "Neither Brady with his vast slow camera, nor Homer with his eye that stopped movement like a focal-plane shutter, nor Eakins with his eye that pierced the surface to the structure beneath could see an object with the same kind of clarity as a man named William M. Harnett." (The Art-Makers, pp. 375, 377) In its technical finish, one of the hallmarks of Harnett's style, Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box is representative of table-top still lifes created in the late 1870s at the beginning of his mature painting career. Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box contains all of the essential elements of mug, pipe and reading material that can be found in a group of Harnett's paintings, which have been termed "the bachelor still lifes."
But Harnett's works are not merely meaningful in their crystalline representations of the real thing, for the objects within them virtually transcend the nature of average still-life props as compositional elements. For Harnett, still lifes had to possess a narrative element. In a rare interview with the artist from about 1889, conducted by a reporter from the New York News, Harnett stated that he tried to "make the composition tell a story." His paintings allude to scenarios, which were initiated by the objects chosen and their arrangement in space. Cozily nestled in an almost completely tonal setting, the seemingly ordinary objects included in Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box appear to have been momentarily abandoned by their owner: a rustic earthenware mug, the daily paper, a small unidentified volume, discarded matches and a blue canister of tobacco--possibly from Virginia, which provides a singular note of color in an otherwise tonal painting. However, the composition's central focus is a meerschaum pipe, barely lit, which emits curls of smoke that rise up languidly into the air. The viewer can almost smell its aroma, as well as the fragrance of the tobacco blend from the open box.
Although Harnett lived much of his life in a solitary manner, he came from a large family of Irish immigrants who were craftsmen. Born in Ireland in 1848 and raised in Philadelphia, he was one of five children, whose mother was widowed in the early 1860s. Harnett never married and supported his mother for much of his life. He attended the Pennyslvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the oldest academy in the country, from 1866 to 1869. In 1869 he moved to New York, where he briefly studied at the Cooper Union from 1870 until 1871 and then at the National Academy of Design from 1872 until 1876. Most of the classes he attended were conducted in the evening, for between 1865 and 1875, Harnett also supported himself by engraving silver. P.R. Provost has connected the detail work of engraving with a burin, not only to Harnett's extremely detailed surfaces, but also to the diverse techniques he employed to achieve his illusionistic effects, such as minute scratches into the paint layers. ("Burin to Brush: Harnett as an Artisan," William M. Harnett, New York, 1992, p. 133) This manner of rendering the simplest of objects with super clarity relates to his careful observation of form that he learned at the academies. Equally, it relates to the tradition of Philadelphia still-life painters, who depicted humble objects in a tender manner, as in the fruit still lifes of Raphaelle Peale and the dessert tables of John F. Francis.
Harnett's most well-known works are his elaborate trompe l'oeil paintings, especially depictions of masculine objects, such as hunting materials and dead game in the After the Hunt paintings. However, one of his contributions to American still-life painting is his combination of trompe l'oeil effects within the category of the table-top still life. He often composed his works so that the objects within them mirrored life-size scale. Harnett has created surface textures that have a tactile quality, tempting the viewer to reach out and lift an object from its setting. In Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box, we want to pick up the pipe, to read the folded edition of the New York Sun and to touch the rough texture of the earthenware mug, which is described with built-up paint surface. The most conspicuous trompe l'oeil component of the painting is the manner in which he poised the match on the table's edge, since it seems to project out of the picture plane and into the viewer's space.
Signed and dated 1878, Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box falls into the group of masculine table-top still lifes that included smoking, writing and bankers' tables which Harnett painted in the late 1870s. This group of works was widely exhibited in the late 1870s, especially in New York and Philadelphia under titles like Bachelor's Comfort, Materials for a Leisure Hour and Jake's Solace. Referring to works in an 1877 Philadelphia exhibition, William Gerdts has stated that these "paintings enjoyed a rather positive reception, being acclaimed in the catalogue for 'their careful finish and close attention to reality.' Materials for a Quiet Evening was praised as representing 'its title very cozily indeed,'" ("The Artist's Public Face," William M. Harnett, New York, 1992, p. 90) While many of the late 1870s still lifes have not been identified with particular works exhibited, it is probable that Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box--since its scale and finish are comparable to The Social Club (private collection) and is firmly documented to have been exhibited in 1879--may have been included in a late 1870s exhibition.
In its fixation on material goods, this particular asssemblage of objects definitely departs from the earlier American tradition of fruit and floral painting. From about 1878 to 1880, the period in which he created Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box, Harnett abandoned his earlier fruit still lifes, such as A Wooden Basket of Catawba Grapes of 1876 (Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington), to concentrate on his own stylistic and thematic vocabulary. Harnett's best table-top still lifes relate closely to the material world that surrounded him and correspond to the sensibilities of other American realists of the period, both in literature and art. One might compare Harnett's careful delineation of tobacco pouches, pipes, money, inkwells and letters to William Dean Howells' and Henry James' exhaustive descriptions of places and people in American society or to Eakins' detailed scenes of rowing and his highly individualized portraits. John Wilmerding has discussed the late 1870s group of paintings to which Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box belongs as "an index not only of his artistic thought and style but also of many larger currents in American culture during the last third of the nineteenth century." ("Notes of Change," William M. Harnett, New York, 1992, p. 149)
Unlike the earlier American traditions of still life that preceded him, Harnett stressed man-made articles, objects made for material comfort. The paintings of the late 1870s in part reflect America's socio-cultural climate after the Civil War, as it became increasingly preoccupied with business, trade, the production of goods and their consumption.
These material objects displayed in Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box suggest a male presence. The pipe with glowing embers and fresh tobacco in the composition affirm this supposition, since pipe-smoking in the United States was an almost exclusively male activity. The intimation of a masculine presence is significant, since Harnett was a bachelor in the late 1870s and remained so the rest of his life. Pipes in Harnett's pictures can also suggest male sociality, as in the case of The Social Club, made a year later. Like Harnett's focus on material goods, these smoking scenes correspond to trends in contemporary American life. Smoking tables such as The Social Club should be viewed against phenomenon such as the rise of the men's club as a social forum. It was not uncommon for men to obtain membership and frequent several clubs at one time. These "clubmen," as they were known at the time, could very easily represent part of the narrative in The Social Club. In this painting a variety of meerschaum and clay pipes is arranged in diverse positions, as if they belong to individual club members. Still Life with Blue Tobacco Box sets up an alternate story line, which relates to the more solitary aspect of smoking. Its simple meerschaum, paper and mug suggest a bachelor's creature comforts, a refuge from the materialistic American metropolis.
These paintings appealed to male sensibility of the day and must have decorated appropriate male spaces in the house, such as a billiard room. Indeed, as Doreen Bolger has demonstrated, the majority of Harnett's patrons were men who came from wealthy business and mercantile classes. ("Patrons of the Artist," William M. Harnett, New York, 1992, pp. 73-85) Realism in general has been associated with a masculine sensibility that stood in stark contrast to more "feminine" painters, such as Julian Alden Weir who were influenced by French Impressionism. In the early twentieth century, artists looked to realists such as Eakins and Homer to reinvigorate and masculinize American art. At the time of his premature death in 1892, a reporter referred to Harnett as "one of the best known still-life painters in the country." ( New York Times, October 31, 1892, p. 3) He possessed a secure patronage base, commanded large sums for his works and created a unique approach to still-life painting that closely related to his own biography as well as to the American world in which he lived and worked.
Christie's is grateful to Jennifer M. Hardin for contributing this catalogue essay.