Card Rack with a Jack of Hearts
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
unframed: 76.2 × 63.5 cm · framed: 95.9 × 83.2 × 4.4 cm
Classification
Painting
Department
American Painting and Sculpture
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
Accession Number
1973.30
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
About this artwork
Like modern-day bulletin boards, card racks were used to gather newspaper clippings, scraps of paper, and other ephemera in one place. Although it is unclear if the items seen here carry symbolic meaning, they nevertheless demonstrate the human desire to collect and recollect. Their tattered state and frayed edges further evoke a sense of memory and nostalgia. The illusionistic quality of Peto’s pictures makes the objects appear to exist in real space. Even the cigarette butt perched at the bott...