1851-1892 Harnett was born in Clonakilty, County Cork, Ireland during the time of the potato famine. Shortly after his birth his family emigrated to America, settling in Philadelphia. Becoming a United States citizen in 1868, he made a living as a young man by engraving designs on table silver, while also taking night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later, in New York, at Cooper Union and at the National Academy of Design. His first known oil painting, a still life, dates from 1874. The style of trompe l'oeil painting that Harnett developed was distinctive and inspired many imitators, but it was not without precedent. A number of 17th century Dutch painters, Pieter Claesz. for instance, had specialized in tabletop still life of astonishing verisimilitude. Raphaelle Peale, working in Philadelphia in the early 19th century, pioneered the form in America. What sets Harnett's work apart, besides his enormous skill, is his interest in depicting objects not usually made the subject of a painting. Harnett painted musical instruments, hanging game, and tankards, but also painted the unconventional Golden Horseshoe (1886), a single rusted horseshoe shown nailed to a board. He painted a casual jumble of second-hand books set on top of a crate, Job Lot, Cheap (1878), as well as firearms and even paper currency. His works sold well, but they were more likely to be found hanging in a tavern or a business office than in a museum, as they did not conform to contemporary notions of high art. Harnett spent the years 1880?C1886 in Europe, staying in Munich from 1881 until early 1885. Harnett's best-known paintings, the four versions of After The Hunt, were painted between 1883 and 1885. Each is an imposing composition of hunting equipment and dead game, hanging on a door with ornate hinges at the right and keyhole plate at the left. These paintings, like the horseshoe or currency depictions mentioned earlier, are especially effective as trompe l'oeil because the objects occupy a shallow space, meaning that the illusion is not spoiled by parallax shift if the viewer moves. Overall, Harnett's work is most comparable to that of the slightly younger John F. Peto. The two artists knew each other, and a comparison can be made between two paintings featuring violins. Harnett's Music and Good Luck from 1888 shows the violin hanging upright on a door with ornate hinges and with a slightly torn piece of sheet music behind it. The elements are arranged in a stable, deliberate manner. Peto's 1890 painting shows the violin hanging askew, as well as chipped and worn, with one string broken. The sheet music is dog-eared and torn around the edges, and placed haphazardly behind the instrument. The hinges are less ornate, and one is broken. Harnett's objects show signs of use but are well preserved, while Peto's more humble objects are nearly used up. Crippling rheumatism plagued Harnett in his last years, reducing the number but not the quality of his paintings. He died in New York City in 1892. Other artists who painted similar compositions in Harnett's wake include his contemporary John Haberle and successors such as Otis Kaye and Jefferson David Chalfant.  Related Paintings of William Michael Harnett :. | The Old Cremona | Still Life with Pipe and Tobacco | Dinge fur eine Mubestunde | Munich Still Life | Still Life with Letter to Mr.Clarke |
Related Artists:
Eugene Louis Boudin
(12 July 1824 - 8 August 1898) was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores. His pastels, summary and economic, garnered the splendid eulogy of Baudelaire, and Corot who, gazing at his pictures, said to him, "You are the master of the sky." Born at Honfleur, France, he worked in a small art shop where Claude Monet displayed his art work Le Havre and Honfleur across the estuary of the Seine. But before old age came on him, Boudin's father abandoned seafaring, and his son gave it up too, having no real vocation for it, though he preserved to his last days much of a sailor's character, frankness, accessibility, and open-heartedness. In 1835, his family moved to Le Havre, where his father established himself as stationer and frame-maker. He began work the next year as an assistant in a stationery and framing store before opening his own small shop. There he came into contact with artists working in the area and exhibited in his shop the paintings of Constant Troyon and Jean-François Millet, who, along with Jean-Baptiste Isabey and Thomas Couture whom he met during this time, encouraged young Boudin to follow an artistic career. At the age of 22 he abandoned the world of commerce, started painting full-time, and traveled to Paris the following year and then through Flanders. In 1850 he earned a scholarship that enabled him to move to Paris, although he often returned to paint in Normandy and, from 1855, made regular trips to Brittany. The Beach at Villerville, 1864. Eugene Boudin. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. (Zoomview) Rivage de Pontrieux, Cotes-du-Nord. 1874. Eugene Boudin. Landscape with Sunset. 1880-1890. Watercolour. Musee d'Orsay, Paris Berck, Fishermen at Low TideDutch 17th century masters profoundly influenced him, and on meeting the Dutch painter Johan Jongkind, who already made his mark in French artistic circles, Boudin was advised by his new friend to paint outdoors (en plein air). He also worked with Troyon and Isabey, and in 1859 met Gustave Courbet who introduced him to Charles Baudelaire, the first critic to draw Boudines talents to public attention when the artist made his debut at the 1859 Paris Salon. In 1856/57 Boudin met the young Claude Monet who spent several months working with Boudin in his studio. The two remained lifelong friends and Monet later paid tribute to Boudines early influence. Boudin joined Monet and his young friends in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, but never considered himself a radical or innovator. Boudines growing reputation enabled him to travel extensively in the 1870s. He visited Belgium, the Netherlands, and southern France, and from 1892 to 1895 made regular trips to Venice. He continued to exhibit at the Paris Salons, receiving a third place medal at the Paris Salon of 1881, and a gold medal at the 1889 Exposition Universelle. In 1892 Boudin was made a knight of the Legion d'honneur, a somewhat tardy recognition of his talents and influence on the art of his contemporaries. Late in his life he returned to the south of France as a refuge from ill-health, and recognizing soon that the relief it could give him was almost spent, he returned to his home at Deauville, to die within sight of Channel waters and under Channel skies.
Domenico Induno
(1815 - 1878) was an Italian painter, originally a goldsmith. He was born and died in Milan, and studied in the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, as well as under Luigi Sabatelli and at Rome. He tried successively the Neoclassicism and Romantic schools, but afterwards settled down to depict popular life at Milan. In 1848 he took part with the Revolution, and had in consequence to flee to Switzerland. Thence he passed to Tuscany, and did not return home until 1859. His brother Gerolamo Induno was also a painter. Domenico married the sister of the Swiss painter Angelo Trezzini. Domenico often painted patriotic canvases, in a style indebted both to Ingres and Francesco Hayez. Among his paintings are:
Woolner, Thomas
1825 - 1892,English sculptor and poet. He ranks with John Henry Foley as the leading sculptor of mid-Victorian England. He trained with William Behnes and in 1842 enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy, London. In 1844 he exhibited at Westminster Hall, London, a life-size plaster group, the Death of Boadicea (destr.), in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain sculptural commissions for the Houses of Parliament. His earliest important surviving work is the statuette of Puck (plaster, 1845-7; C. G. Woolner priv. col.), which was admired by William Holman Hunt and helped to secure Woolner's admission in 1848 to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The work's Shakespearean theme and lifelike execution, stressing Puck's humorous malice rather than traditional ideal beauty, made it highly appealing. Although eclipsed by Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Woolner was an important figure in the Brotherhood. He contributed poetry to its journal, The Germ (1850), and his work was committed to truthfulness to nature more consistently than that of any other Pre-Raphaelite, except for Hunt. This is evident in Woolner's monument to William Wordsworth (marble, 1851; St Oswald, Grasmere, Cumbria).