WILLIAM MICHAEL HARNETT (1848-1892)
WILLIAM MICHAEL HARNETT (1848-1892)
WILLIAM MICHAEL HARNETT (1848-1892)
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WILLIAM MICHAEL HARNETT (1848-1892)

Still Life with Violin

Details
WILLIAM MICHAEL HARNETT (1848-1892)
Still Life with Violin
signed with initials in monogram, inscribed and dated 'Wm Harnett./München./1883.' (lower left)
oil on panel
8 ¾ x 7 in. (22.2 x 17.8 cm.)
Painted in 1883.
Provenance
The Manoogian Collection, Taylor, Michigan, by 1993.
Landscape Partners, L.P.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2007.
Exhibited
New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Art Gallery; Detroit, Michigan, Detroit Institute of Arts; Atlanta, Georgia, The High Museum of Art, A Private View: American Paintings from the Manoogian Collection, April 3, 1993-March 6, 1994, pp. 62-64, illustrated.

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Lot Essay

In 1880, William Michael Harnett arrived in Europe and established a studio in Munich, Germany, where he increasingly focused his still lifes on musical and literary motifs. The present work includes a meticulously rendered violin atop sheet music, likely a violin arrangement of an aria from Verdi's La traviata. The scattered bric-a-brac further serve as an insight into the fictive mind of the sophisticated, courtly gentleman who would have owned such objects. Harnett "seems to be pointing to the endurance of the human spirit through the depiction of objects that signify lasting value. The violin, works of literature, music, candlestick, and tankard may have been crafted decades—even centuries—ago, yet they all show evidence of continued use...Human life may be transitory, but some creations of the human imagination, as Harnett's painting attests, survive to inspire future generations." (A. Tilghman, in A Private View: American Paintings from the Manoogian Collection, exhibition catalogue, New Haven, Connecticut, 1993, p. 64)

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