Just Dessert
William Michael Harnett (American, born Ireland, 1848–1892)
1891
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 56.6 × 68 cm (22 1/4 × 26 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Friends of American Art Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
One of only three works William Michael Harnett painted in the year before his death, Just Dessert offers the viewer a display of foodstuffs sumptuously arranged on a marble surface. The traditional tabletop composition is one that Harnett often employed in his still lifes. In Just Dessert, the exotic clashes with the quotidian—Maraschino liqueur, half a coconut, and Smyrna figs rest alongside a copper pitcher, pewter tankard, and ginger jar. Small crumbs of cork are visible on the grapes and fig seeds are smashed on the side of the wooden box, indicating that the dessert has been eaten, as well as highlighting Harnett’s skillful renderings in trompe l’oeil (fool-the-eye) painting.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
