John Frederick Peto
1854
–1907
Death placeIsland Heights, New Jersey, United States
BirthplacePhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
BiographyStill life painter John Frederick Peto was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised by his maternal grandparents. His father, who was a picture frame gilder, most likely introduced him to art. Primarily self-taught, Peto enrolled for one year at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he met painter William Michael Harnett (1848–1892), before returning to his solitary practice. He experimented briefly with portraiture but very quickly found his niche in still-life painting, perhaps due to Philadelphia’s stature as the American center of the genre during this period. Peto admired the work of famed still-life painters such as Raphaelle and James Peale and focused on trompe l'oeil painting (still life painting intended to “fool the eye" into perceiving a flat image as three dimensional). He often photographed his still life assemblages before painting them.
Peto married Christine Pearl Smith (1869-1945) in 1887, and two years later they moved from Philadelphia to the small town of Island Heights, New Jersey, a relatively remote resort community known to the artist who had previously visited to play the cornet for local camp meetings. Removed from the artistic milieu of Philadelphia, Peto continued to pursue trompe l’oeil painting in his distinctive style.
Peto briefly moved to Ohio in 1894, working on a commission for a Cincinnati saloon proprietor. It is likely this sojourn that prompted the creation of and provided the material depicted in the Terra Foundation's Old Time Letter Rack, which features newspapers, letters, and scraps with Ohio addresses and postmarks. After Peto's death in 1907 at age 53, much of his work was subsumed into his colleague Harnett’s impressive oeuvre. In the mid-twentieth century, as Harnett's work became increasingly popular, art critic Alfred Frankenstein (1906-1981) identified many paintings by Peto previously attributed to Harnett. Peto’s relatively short life and obscured artistic afterlife have led additional irony to his work, which often dealt with memory, loss, and aging.
Peto married Christine Pearl Smith (1869-1945) in 1887, and two years later they moved from Philadelphia to the small town of Island Heights, New Jersey, a relatively remote resort community known to the artist who had previously visited to play the cornet for local camp meetings. Removed from the artistic milieu of Philadelphia, Peto continued to pursue trompe l’oeil painting in his distinctive style.
Peto briefly moved to Ohio in 1894, working on a commission for a Cincinnati saloon proprietor. It is likely this sojourn that prompted the creation of and provided the material depicted in the Terra Foundation's Old Time Letter Rack, which features newspapers, letters, and scraps with Ohio addresses and postmarks. After Peto's death in 1907 at age 53, much of his work was subsumed into his colleague Harnett’s impressive oeuvre. In the mid-twentieth century, as Harnett's work became increasingly popular, art critic Alfred Frankenstein (1906-1981) identified many paintings by Peto previously attributed to Harnett. Peto’s relatively short life and obscured artistic afterlife have led additional irony to his work, which often dealt with memory, loss, and aging.