![My Gems (1888) "Oil on wood, 45.7 x 35 cm" [National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA] -- William Michael Harnett (Irish-born American; 1848 - 1892) | by La Música en La Pintura - Music in Painting.](http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52386128361_cc2c8d9424.jpg)
My Gems (1888) "Oil on wood, 45.7 x 35 cm" [National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA] -- William Michael Harnett (Irish-born American; 1848 - 1892)
In this somber still life of a cluttered Victorian interior, well-worn yet once-precious objects have been rendered so meticulously that the artist's brushstrokes are barely discernible. Harnett's exquisitely subtle tonal modulations and his ability to differentiate textures make this painting a tour-de-force of artistic illusionism. Such trompe l'oeil art gained popularity in late nineteenth-century America, reflecting a fin-de-siècle preoccupation with mortality and the fleeting rewards of material wealth.
Historically, such a vanitas still life would have incorporated traditional symbolic elements such as a skull, an hourglass, or a snuffed-out candle as unmistakable reminders of death. Harnett's allusion to human life is more subtle: well-thumbed volumes of Dante, Shakespeare, and Tasso; a lamp; the burnt, broken matchsticks; the Meerschaum pipe and spilled ashes; the piccolo and the sheet music are emblematic references to the five senses. These diverse elements, arranged in a highly unstable composition, all seem in danger of imminent collapse.
Source: NGA
www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.43680.html
My Gems (1888) "Oil on wood, 45.7 x 35 cm" [National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA] -- William Michael Harnett (Irish-born American; 1848 - 1892)
In this somber still life of a cluttered Victorian interior, well-worn yet once-precious objects have been rendered so meticulously that the artist's brushstrokes are barely discernible. Harnett's exquisitely subtle tonal modulations and his ability to differentiate textures make this painting a tour-de-force of artistic illusionism. Such trompe l'oeil art gained popularity in late nineteenth-century America, reflecting a fin-de-siècle preoccupation with mortality and the fleeting rewards of material wealth.
Historically, such a vanitas still life would have incorporated traditional symbolic elements such as a skull, an hourglass, or a snuffed-out candle as unmistakable reminders of death. Harnett's allusion to human life is more subtle: well-thumbed volumes of Dante, Shakespeare, and Tasso; a lamp; the burnt, broken matchsticks; the Meerschaum pipe and spilled ashes; the piccolo and the sheet music are emblematic references to the five senses. These diverse elements, arranged in a highly unstable composition, all seem in danger of imminent collapse.
Source: NGA
www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.43680.html