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Rack Picture for Dr. Nones
William A. Mitchell (American, 1828–1890)
1879
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 45.7 × 37.8 cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- Philadelphia
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Frederick G. Wacker Jr. Endowment Fund; through prior gift of Mrs. Albert J. Beveridge in memory of Abby Louise Spencer Eddy
- 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
This type of trompe l’oeil (fools the eye) painting simulates an old-fashioned bulletin board that held important, yet ephemeral documents like letters and newspaper clippings under strips of ribbon. Such “rack picture” still lifes functioned as biographical portraits, in this case for Dr. Samuel Smith Nones, the prominent Philadelphia dentist who commissioned this work. Adjacent to the central letter to Dr. S. S. Nones are envelopes addressed to medical colleagues and one to Nones’s brother. The painting’s illusionistic fragments cleverly define the dentist’s professional and personal identity, narrating a rich tale of camaraderie and achievement for an inner circle of viewers. William A. Mitchell, the father of the youngest dentist in the group, likely executed the composition.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
