Lights of Other Days
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
77.5 × 4514 cm (30 1/2 × 45 1/4 in.)
Classification
oil on canvas
Department
Arts of the Americas
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
2156
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
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...
About the Artist
John Frederick Peto · 1854–1907
John Frederick Peto, born on May 21, 1854, in Philadelphia to picture-frame gilder Thomas Hope Peto and Catherine Marion Ham, grew up as the eldest of five children, primarily raised by his maternal grandparents and aunts. Largely self-taught, he briefly studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1877, where he first exhibited and befriended fellow trompe-l'œil artist William M. Harne...