One Dollar Bill

One Dollar Bill is a classic example of American trompe l’oeil painting by John Haberle, a master of the genre. A popular style of painting in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century, trompe l’oeil paintings represented still-life assemblages and objects so accurately as to fool the viewer into initially believing their three-dimensionality. One Dollar Bill is indicative of Haberle’s prowess in the subgenre of currency still-life paintings—works that depict coinage and bills.

One Dollar Bill earns its title from the painting’s centerpiece, a single silver dollar certificate. A deceptively simple image, the painting reflects Haberle’s sharply humorous take on trompe l’oeil. The silver dollar certificate was put into circulation in the 1870s in part because of a shift away from the gold standard in American currency. As a compromise to those who supported a gold standard, however, silver certificates had a built-in limitation: banks were not required to honor them. The bill featured in the painting appears well worn, reflecting the intended use of currency: repeated exchange between buyers and sellers. Repeated use of this bill is impossible, however; a painted dollar, the bill is not legal tender, cannot be circulated, and is thus worthless—compounding the worthlessness of its inspiration, the fraught and controversial silver certificate.

While committed to the trompe l’oeil style in One Dollar Bill, Haberle seems less interested in fooling the viewer than he is in letting them in on the joke. Featuring a single bill rather than the accumulation of money and ephemera that is common in currency paintings from this period, the clean canvas invites the viewer’s eyes to scan the finely rendered details of the bill, eventually drawing attention to the painting’s key element of trickery: a small horizontal tear at the bill’s right edge. This tear reveals not the expected backdrop of the painting but instead the reddish-brown coloring of the ground and primer layer below the paint. The tear highlights this “mistake,” alerting the viewer to the trick even as they enjoy the skillfully painted deception before them.

Featuring an engraved portrait of Martha Washington, the silver dollar certificate was the first U.S. Treasury-issued currency to display the image of a woman. With Mrs. Washington, One Dollar Bill, compounds the layers of humorous meaning. Her image is copied from a portrait painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1796. Ostensibly a still life painting, One Dollar Bill is a changeable visual pun, shifting from still life to celebrity portrait to tongue-in-cheek reproduction of a famous American work. Despite its mutable interpretation, however, the painting always evinces Haberle’s consummate skill—the crisply executed lines of the bill and the detail paid to Martha Washington’s engraved visage reveal the artist’s training as an engraver and lithographer.

A knowing wink-and-nudge from creator to viewer, One Dollar Bill invites its audience to consider questions of wealth, reproduction, and truth in visual culture. Americans in the late nineteenth century were keen to engage with these questions as they developed an interest in visual illusionism fueled by rapidly changing technologies in photography and film and grappled with an increasingly complex financial system. One Dollar Bill speaks directly to these fascinations, acknowledging the viewer’s sophisticated eye and ability to recognize the trick even as it demands respect as a near-perfect deception.

John Haberle: Master of Illusion. Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts (organizer). Venues: Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts, June 16–August 11, 1985, Whitney Museum of American Art, Fairfield County, September 10–November 6, 1985; Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, Texas, November 29, 1985–January 19, 1986. [exh. cat.]

Old Money: American Trompe L’Oeil Images of Currency. Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, November 11–December 17, 1988. [exh. cat.]

America. Die Neue Welt in Bildern des 19. Jahrhunderts (The New World in 19th-Century Painting). Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria, March 17–June 20,1999. [exh. cat.]

Money, Art and the Art of Money. Suzanne H. Arnold Art Gallery, Lebanon Valley College, Annville, Pennsylvania, September 2–October 23, 2011. [exh. cat.]

Once Upon a Time in America: Three Centuries of US American Art (Es war einmal in Amerika: 300 Jahre Us-Amerikanishe Kunst), Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, Germany (organizer). Venue: Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, Germany, November 23, 2018–March 24, 2019. [exh. cat.]

Sill, Gertrude Grace. “John Haberle, Master of Illusion.” Magazine Antiques 126:5 (November 1984): 1229–41.

Hayes, Gaylen. “Entirely with a Brush and the Naked Eye.” The Numismatist 102 (August 1989): 1239.

Sill, Gertrude Grace. John Haberle: American Master of Illusion. (exh. cat., New Britain Museum of Art). New Britain, Connecticut: New Britain Museum of Art, 2009. Text pp. 34–35; fig. 10, p.35 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M., and Peter John Brownlee, eds. Conversations with the Collection: A Terra Foundation Collection Handbook. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018. Text p. 105; ill. p. 105 (color).

Schaefer, Barbara and Anita Hachmann, eds. Es War Einmal in Amerika: 300 Jahre US-Amerikanische Kunst. (exh. cat. Wallraf-Richartz Museum). Köln: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud. Text pp. 416; ill. p. 417 (color).