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John Frederick Peto
John F. Peto painted trompe l’oeil still lifes: letter racks, worn books, old doors with keys and horseshoes, and boards pinned with photographs, painted so convincingly that they seem to sit on the wall.
Born in Philadelphia, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he knew William Harnett, the other great American master of the genre. In 1889 he moved to Island Heights, New Jersey, where he worked in near obscurity, and for decades after his death many of his pictures were sold as Harnett’s. Compared with Harnett, his objects are more battered, his colour softer and his mood more wistful. His home is now the John F. Peto Studio Museum.
A Student’s Desk and Board with Lincoln Photograph are good examples of his tender attention to worn, ordinary things.
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