John frederick peto biography

The still life painter John Frederick Peto was.
John Frederick Peto (May 21, 1854 – November 23, 1907) was an American trompe-l'œil ("fool the eye") painter who was long forgotten until his paintings were.
John Frederick Peto was an American trompe-l'œil painter who was long forgotten until his paintings were rediscovered along with those of fellow trompe-l'œil artist William Harnett.

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John Frederick Peto (1854 – 1907)

John Peto was born on March 17, 1854 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of a dealer in picture frames and later of fire department supplies. Little is known of his early artistic training except that he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1877 and during the next half dozen years he contributed works to its annual exhibitions. While as the Academy he was influenced by classmate William Harnett, “trompe l’oeil” painter. In contrast to Harnett, he painted commonplace subjects that were in disorder and ramschackled.

From 1879 to 1889 Peto tried to live the life of a professional artist by maintaining a studio in Philadelphia. However he was not very successful because he often painted objects that were perceived as ugly and not the pleasing subjects the public wanted. He found he made more money by playing the cornet.

In 1887 Peto traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he met and married Christine Pearl Smith. It was also in the late 1880s that he began visiting the Methodist resort community of Island Hei

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John Frederick Peto

A lifelong resident of the Northeast, John Frederick Peto was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Though raised by his maternal grandparents, Peto was likely first exposed to fine art by his father, who was a picture frame gilder. Primarily a self-taught artist, Peto enrolled for one year at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he met close friend and famed trompe l’oeil 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, but he updated the practice to suit his own needs, focusing on trompe l’oeil painting—at which he excelled—and often using a camera to take photographs of his assemblages before painting them.

Peto met and married Christine Pearl Smith in 1887, and two years later they moved from Philadelphia to the small to

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John Frederick Peto

John Frederick Peto, American (1856-1931)

John Frederick Peto was a disciple of the school of American Realism pioneered by William Michael Harnett (1848-92) and Jefferson David Chalfont (1856-1931). In their development of the trompe l'oeil (French: "deceive the eye") technique, Harnett and Chalfont had broken with the more optimistic tradition of still-life painting prevalent during the new American Republic and exemplified in the works of Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825) and John F. Francis (1808-1886). Though still conveying a notion that the spirit of an object is revealed in the fact of its presence. (1)

American still-life painting at the end of the nineteenth century began to favor a more somber, weighty style that reflected both an "antisocial reclusive ness and a Victorian taste for bric-a-brac and antique collecting." (2)

A little-known admirer of Harnett, John Frederick Peto was born in 1854 to a Philadelphia dealer in picture frames. His father, Thomas H. Peto, later became an honorary member of the