For Sunday's Dinner
William Michael Harnett (American, born Ireland, 1848–1892)
1888
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 94.3 × 53.6 cm (37 1/8 × 21 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Wilson L. Mead Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Still-life painter William Michael Harnett excelled at trompe l’oeil, painting that fools the eye, through realistic depiction. In For Sunday’s Dinner, a chicken hangs in front of a painted door with its throat cut and most of its feathers plucked; a few remaining downy spots stand out against the puckered, pimpled flesh. The metal door hinges, on the right side of the canvas, frame the chicken and echo its form. The painting’s title and the rough, blemished surface of the door suggest a country dinner, the homey meal evoking nostalgia for a simpler past.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
