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Lot Essay
The violin as a subject in American art has its own fascinating history. Before the Civil War, it appeared as the fiddle, played by itself on flatboats, in taverns and at country dances. Beginning in the 1860's it takes on the character instead of one among several instruments played together at amateur "musicales." It is not until the end of the nineteenth century, especially in the works of Thomas Eakins, that it is first depicted as a professional concert instrument.
The violins of both William M. Harnett and John F. Peto fall within the second phase of this evolution. That is, they are the instruments of practiced amateurs, used in leisure. Peto was particularly known for his musical talents; in the 1870's, when he and Harnett both lived in Philadelphia, the two friends posed together in Peto's studio for a photograph that shows Peto holding his violin.
It was Harnett, however, returning to New York in 1886 from his long sojourn abroad, who invented the motif of a violin hanging against a flat wall or door. Old Violin, the painting that resulted, was first seen by Peto in a Cincinnati exhibition that same year. Although Peto adopted Harnett's motif in such works as Violin, he approached the subject with his own special touch. In place of Harnett's high surface finish, Peto shows the wear and tear of use and age. His geometries are both non-referential (the lines on the background wall simply exist, without explanation) and more dynamic than Harnett's stable arrangements. And instead of providing us in his sheet music with a detailed and elaborate score, as Harnett would, Peto simply labels the music "VIOLIN", reinforcing what we see with its exact verbal equivalent.
The violins of both William M. Harnett and John F. Peto fall within the second phase of this evolution. That is, they are the instruments of practiced amateurs, used in leisure. Peto was particularly known for his musical talents; in the 1870's, when he and Harnett both lived in Philadelphia, the two friends posed together in Peto's studio for a photograph that shows Peto holding his violin.
It was Harnett, however, returning to New York in 1886 from his long sojourn abroad, who invented the motif of a violin hanging against a flat wall or door. Old Violin, the painting that resulted, was first seen by Peto in a Cincinnati exhibition that same year. Although Peto adopted Harnett's motif in such works as Violin, he approached the subject with his own special touch. In place of Harnett's high surface finish, Peto shows the wear and tear of use and age. His geometries are both non-referential (the lines on the background wall simply exist, without explanation) and more dynamic than Harnett's stable arrangements. And instead of providing us in his sheet music with a detailed and elaborate score, as Harnett would, Peto simply labels the music "VIOLIN", reinforcing what we see with its exact verbal equivalent.