William HARNETT
William Michael HARNETT.
William Michael HARNETT was an Irish-American painter known for his trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) still lifes of life-size ordinary objects rendered so realistically as to seem three-dimensional. He painted musical instruments, tankards, rusty horseshoes, second-hand books, firearms, and even paper currency. Harnett executed only one figure painting in his life, this illusionistic study of a child – "Attention, Company!" But it changed the well-established notion of Harnett as an artist concerned only with the outward appearance of inanimate objects with not the deeper meaning. “I endeavor to make the composition tell a story,” Harnett once said of his art.
But what narrative does he offer here in the face of this young boy, frozen at attention as a make-believe soldier, with his tattered clothes, his crisp newspaper hat, and the inscrutable graffiti-laden wall behind him?
William Michael HARNETT.
William Michael HARNETT was an Irish-American painter known for his trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) still lifes of life-size ordinary objects rendered so realistically as to seem three-dimensional. He painted musical instruments, tankards, rusty horseshoes, second-hand books, firearms, and even paper currency. Harnett executed only one figure painting in his life, this illusionistic study of a child – "Attention, Company!" But it changed the well-established notion of Harnett as an artist concerned only with the outward appearance of inanimate objects with not the deeper meaning. “I endeavor to make the composition tell a story,” Harnett once said of his art.
But what narrative does he offer here in the face of this young boy, frozen at attention as a make-believe soldier, with his tattered clothes, his crisp newspaper hat, and the inscrutable graffiti-laden wall behind him?
