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Lights of Other Days
John Frederick Peto (American, 1854–1907)
1906
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 77.5 × 115 cm (30 1/2 × 45 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Goodman 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
Lights of Other Days, like many of John F. Peto’s still lifes, is replete with nostalgia. Strewn along a shallow shelf above a doorframe is an array of old, well-worn objects: candleholders with wax candles nearly used up, rusty oil lamps, and torn books. These discarded commonplace objects allude to older ways of life and fading memories. Peto specialized in trompe l’oeil (fools the eye) pictures; yet his soft-edged style is suggestive of the artist’s hand rather than the heightened illusionism employed by other trompe l’oeil painters such as William Harnett. Trained in Philadelphia, Peto stopped exhibiting his work at professional venues by 1890, creating compositions instead for local patrons near his New Jersey home.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
