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Lot Essay
Among the great achievements of American still-life painting are John Frederick Peto's masterful rack pictures. Executed in 1895, Letter Rack on Black Door demonstrates Peto’s skilled trompe l'oeil technique that uniquely creates compositions both highly specific and universally timeless.
While other trompe l'oeil painters of the same period sought to amuse and cajole viewers with clever technique, Peto on the other hand combined his skillful execution with more personal meaning that continues to speak to us today. As John Wilmerding writes, “In contrast to Harnett's objectivity, Peto became increasingly subjective, if not autobiographical. As he did, his paintings gained in confidence and expressiveness…While his paintings do not spell out a literal story, their elements often evoke narrative or anecdotal associations. While he works with effects of illusionistic render of forms in space, visual trickery is seldom an aim in itself.” (Important Information Inside: The Art of John F. Peto and the Idea of Still-Life Painting in Nineteenth-Century America, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1983, p. 217)
Over the course of his career, Peto evolved his approach to his rack paintings. In earlier years, from 1875 to 1885, he would include specific references to businesses and locations, creating a clear time and space for each work’s setting. As he progressed into a more mature artist, from 1894 to 1906, he created more timeless versions of the rack arrangement, eschewing specificity of text and subject to instead create more universal compositions. Dating from 1895, Letter Rack on Black Door exemplifies the latter, fully developed style. Here, each envelope and note feel highly particular—from the blue envelope at upper left, ripped open at the top rather than opened from its red wax seal to the elegant floral bordered note at lower left. Yet, enough mystery is left in each element that the viewer can interpret these mementos personally, connecting them with their own experiences.
This combination of specificity and universality allows Peto to create a surprisingly contemporary design for a late nineteenth-century still-life painting. Writing about Letter Rack on Black Door, Wilmerding describes, “the total design seems compact and balanced. Most of the letter fragments cohere in a pinwheel pattern around the center, and the pale lavender tapes, though frayed, make a full square, now crossed diagonally and vertically…a wonderfully subtle harmony of pure color block…While this image remains recognizably a letter rack, its effectiveness is unrelated to accuracy of record. Its beauty in fact forces us to enjoy color and form and texture in ways that were quite unusual and modern for their time.” (Important Information Inside, p. 222)
While other trompe l'oeil painters of the same period sought to amuse and cajole viewers with clever technique, Peto on the other hand combined his skillful execution with more personal meaning that continues to speak to us today. As John Wilmerding writes, “In contrast to Harnett's objectivity, Peto became increasingly subjective, if not autobiographical. As he did, his paintings gained in confidence and expressiveness…While his paintings do not spell out a literal story, their elements often evoke narrative or anecdotal associations. While he works with effects of illusionistic render of forms in space, visual trickery is seldom an aim in itself.” (Important Information Inside: The Art of John F. Peto and the Idea of Still-Life Painting in Nineteenth-Century America, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1983, p. 217)
Over the course of his career, Peto evolved his approach to his rack paintings. In earlier years, from 1875 to 1885, he would include specific references to businesses and locations, creating a clear time and space for each work’s setting. As he progressed into a more mature artist, from 1894 to 1906, he created more timeless versions of the rack arrangement, eschewing specificity of text and subject to instead create more universal compositions. Dating from 1895, Letter Rack on Black Door exemplifies the latter, fully developed style. Here, each envelope and note feel highly particular—from the blue envelope at upper left, ripped open at the top rather than opened from its red wax seal to the elegant floral bordered note at lower left. Yet, enough mystery is left in each element that the viewer can interpret these mementos personally, connecting them with their own experiences.
This combination of specificity and universality allows Peto to create a surprisingly contemporary design for a late nineteenth-century still-life painting. Writing about Letter Rack on Black Door, Wilmerding describes, “the total design seems compact and balanced. Most of the letter fragments cohere in a pinwheel pattern around the center, and the pale lavender tapes, though frayed, make a full square, now crossed diagonally and vertically…a wonderfully subtle harmony of pure color block…While this image remains recognizably a letter rack, its effectiveness is unrelated to accuracy of record. Its beauty in fact forces us to enjoy color and form and texture in ways that were quite unusual and modern for their time.” (Important Information Inside, p. 222)