Rack Picture for Dr. Nones
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
45.7 × 37.8 cm (17 1/4 × 14 1/8 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Arts of the Americas
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
154496
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This type of trompe l’oeil (fools the eye) painting simulates an old-fashioned bulletin board that held important, yet ephemeral documents like letters and newspaper clippings under strips of ribbon. Such “rack picture” still lifes functioned as biographical portraits, in this case for Dr. Samuel Smith Nones, the prominent Philadelphia dentist who commissioned this work. Adjacent to the central letter to Dr. S. S. Nones are envelopes addressed to medical colleagues and one to Nones’s brother. Th...