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Lot Essay
William Michael Harnett's Still Life with Lobster, Fruit, Champagne and Newspaper belongs to the series of elaborate table-top still lifes that the artist completed during the early 1880s in Munich. While there, he studied and frequently exhibited still lifes, while continuing to develop his virtuoso painting technique for which he is so celebrated today. Harnett achieved many of his earliest successes with his paintings of fruit still lifes, initially simplified compositions chiefly of fruit alone, culminating in more complex still lifes, such as the present work. The still lifes from this period are masterwoks of illusionism, and in them Harnett explores the tangibility and physicality of real objects -- qualities that define much American painting of the mid-nineteenth century.
The composition of Still Life with Lobster is filled with the kind of prized delicacies one might find in a prosperous home, and draws on the tradition of the kitchen still life initiated in America with the art of Raphaelle Peale. Harnett's still life includes brilliant color, emphasized by the artist's placement of a lobster at the center of the composition. In contrast to the more spare compositions of Peale, whose work Harnett almost certainly knew from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, in his native Philadelphia, Still Life with Lobster presents a lively abundance of objects. Against a vivid red background, Harnett sets the objects on a rich, embroidered fabric. Among them is an oriental ginger jar, a box of figs, a champagne bottle topped with gold foil, an apple, grapes, and a wrapped orange. Even though the work itself was painted in Germany, the newspaper shown here is printed in English (possibly a copy of the Times of Philadelphia).
Painted in 1882, the work belongs to a series begun that year by Harnett in which he featured a red lobster as the central element, combined with bric-a-brac, newspapers, and other everyday objects. Many of the still lifes in this series are small and gem-like, as here, emphasizing Harnett's ability to transform objects with his exuberant tromp- l'oeil technique.
As noted by Thayer Tolles Mickel, "during his career, Harnett's paintings featuring or including fruit progressed conceptually from simple to relatively complex schemes. As fruit ceased to be the central focus of his compositions, it took on a new role, filling and balancing spaces." ("Permanent Perishables," William M. Harnett, New York, 1992, p. 218) Still Life with Lobster exemplifies Harnett's artistic achievement working with increasingly complex and assured compositions, ones in which he fulfills, in a seemingly informal, precisely balanced composition, the promise of his first tentative still lifes. They remain among his most alluring works.
The composition of Still Life with Lobster is filled with the kind of prized delicacies one might find in a prosperous home, and draws on the tradition of the kitchen still life initiated in America with the art of Raphaelle Peale. Harnett's still life includes brilliant color, emphasized by the artist's placement of a lobster at the center of the composition. In contrast to the more spare compositions of Peale, whose work Harnett almost certainly knew from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, in his native Philadelphia, Still Life with Lobster presents a lively abundance of objects. Against a vivid red background, Harnett sets the objects on a rich, embroidered fabric. Among them is an oriental ginger jar, a box of figs, a champagne bottle topped with gold foil, an apple, grapes, and a wrapped orange. Even though the work itself was painted in Germany, the newspaper shown here is printed in English (possibly a copy of the Times of Philadelphia).
Painted in 1882, the work belongs to a series begun that year by Harnett in which he featured a red lobster as the central element, combined with bric-a-brac, newspapers, and other everyday objects. Many of the still lifes in this series are small and gem-like, as here, emphasizing Harnett's ability to transform objects with his exuberant tromp- l'oeil technique.
As noted by Thayer Tolles Mickel, "during his career, Harnett's paintings featuring or including fruit progressed conceptually from simple to relatively complex schemes. As fruit ceased to be the central focus of his compositions, it took on a new role, filling and balancing spaces." ("Permanent Perishables," William M. Harnett, New York, 1992, p. 218) Still Life with Lobster exemplifies Harnett's artistic achievement working with increasingly complex and assured compositions, ones in which he fulfills, in a seemingly informal, precisely balanced composition, the promise of his first tentative still lifes. They remain among his most alluring works.