DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.56224#0055
in the center advertises fire insurance suggests that
inside' there is danger of a conflagration. . .
Inside—the word gains a great significance if we
examine a group of paintings with their one object in
common: a closed door. The door serves as a back-
ground for the display of odd objects: dead fowl and
game, musical instruments, books, and vessels—all
hung on cupboard doors or otherwise placed before
the door in an arrangement that seems far fetched.
For who would block a door with all these objects or
select such a hazardous place for them?
Seen as links in the chain of historical evolution,
these paintings by Harnett can be explained as a fusion
of two types of trompe Lœils: Hondecoeter’s dead fowl
hanging on a wooden wall and Gysbrecht’s cupboard
loaded with books and bric-a-brac. But the historical
explanation does not tell us why this fusion took place
and why in just this way. Harnett's still lifes have a
brooding quality,” to quote Edgar Preston Richard-
son’s appropriate term. This effect transcends the sense
of simple pleasure created by other well-painted still
lifes.
To be sure, Harnett always remained fanatically in-
terested in the appearance of things. But he arranged
his objects in a paradoxical way, so as to make us
wonder whether he really is fascinated more by them
or by the unknown things hidden behind the door.
Take the For Sunday Dinner (1884) as an example:
a plucked turkey and a feathered chicken hang from a
big nail in a rough plank door fitted with solid iron
hinges (fig. 86). An equally solid iron padlock is pro-
vided, but the clasp is free and the lock hangs from its
chain with the key in the keyhole. The painter em-
phasizes this state of things by his use of light and
shadow. In the painting The Trophy of the Hunt,
painted a year later, a dead hare is suspended from a
nail on a wooden door decorated with large, elaborate
wrought-iron hinges (fig. 87). There is no indication
that the door is open. It is more solidly built than the
first one; but one of the arms of the upper hinge is
broken, and a hole shows where it was fastened to the
wood with a huge nail. This incongruous motif has a
twofold function. The first is obvious: to break the
monotony of the pattern; the second is deeper: to
negate the effect of solidity that the door displays. It
looks as if somebody had tried to break in, but had
given up even after the hinge had given way.
In 1892, the year of his death, Harnett painted The
Old Cupboard Door (fig. 89). The door that gives the
picture its title has a big keyhole and massive iron
hinges, suggesting that the inside of the cupboard
would be inaccessible if the planks of the door were
£33
intact. As it is, however, the door has openings large
enough to allow a peep inside. A violin with a bow, a
bugle with sheet music, and a group consisting of three
books, a Dutch earthenware jar, and a sheet of music
are arranged in front of the door. One of the books is
the Odyssey, the other an Italian treatise dated 1507.
These heterogeneous objects are on a single plane-
an arrangement which, as I have shown, creates a mys-
terious impression in a trompe Vœil. Here the mystery
is deepened because all these objects obstruct the ap-
proach to the cupboard. Our attention is divided be-
tween the puzzling foreground and the unknown con-
tents of the cupboard behind the broken door.
Harnett said his painting of still life was exclusively
a necessity turned into a virtue. According to his own
statement, it was poverty that determined his choice
of medium and his continuance in it. He could not
afford to hire models, so he said. But this explanation
is not adequate, for his success was enough to remove
all financial difficulties. Moreover, the statement of the
artist does not even touch the most striking problem,
namely, how he came to be devoted to the device of ar-
ranging heterogeneous objects in such a way as to haunt
the spectator by their irrational effect.
The titles of Harnett's still lifes, After a Night's
Study, for instance, or Mortality and Immortdlity, or
Music and Good Luck, suggest superficial features
only: books, a skull, a manuscript, a violin, and a
horseshoe. They do not allude to the ‘deeper meaning,’
to use Panofsky’s phrase. We need to know much more
than we do about Harnett's life in order to unearth the
foundations of his enigmatic work, but we can grasp
an occasional hint which, in the light of other clues,
gives us something to go on. The slips of paper, for
instance, may betray something the painter chose not
to reveal directly. If the fire insurance poster really
suggests a smoldering desire, the photograph of the
little girl might suggest that the actual content of the
old souvenir is the restrained lament of a solitary man
who longs without hope for the return of a childhood
love. One should recall that Harnett was a sick man.
Even during his European travels he tried in vain to
regain his health in Carlsbad, and with equal futility
he visited the Hot Springs of Arkansas. The serious
character of this illness is attested by his early death.
Edouard Roditi interpreted Harnett’s work as ‘necro-
mancy. Although this term is too romantic, it con-
tains a grain of truth: his paintings are the work of a
man who, in the words of the Swiss poet Conrad
Ferdinand Meyer, Lept friends with Death,” who was
conscious of his precarious condition and chose re-
nunciation as his answer to a stern fate. Renunciation,
moreover, was an answer that accorded with his re-
inside' there is danger of a conflagration. . .
Inside—the word gains a great significance if we
examine a group of paintings with their one object in
common: a closed door. The door serves as a back-
ground for the display of odd objects: dead fowl and
game, musical instruments, books, and vessels—all
hung on cupboard doors or otherwise placed before
the door in an arrangement that seems far fetched.
For who would block a door with all these objects or
select such a hazardous place for them?
Seen as links in the chain of historical evolution,
these paintings by Harnett can be explained as a fusion
of two types of trompe Lœils: Hondecoeter’s dead fowl
hanging on a wooden wall and Gysbrecht’s cupboard
loaded with books and bric-a-brac. But the historical
explanation does not tell us why this fusion took place
and why in just this way. Harnett's still lifes have a
brooding quality,” to quote Edgar Preston Richard-
son’s appropriate term. This effect transcends the sense
of simple pleasure created by other well-painted still
lifes.
To be sure, Harnett always remained fanatically in-
terested in the appearance of things. But he arranged
his objects in a paradoxical way, so as to make us
wonder whether he really is fascinated more by them
or by the unknown things hidden behind the door.
Take the For Sunday Dinner (1884) as an example:
a plucked turkey and a feathered chicken hang from a
big nail in a rough plank door fitted with solid iron
hinges (fig. 86). An equally solid iron padlock is pro-
vided, but the clasp is free and the lock hangs from its
chain with the key in the keyhole. The painter em-
phasizes this state of things by his use of light and
shadow. In the painting The Trophy of the Hunt,
painted a year later, a dead hare is suspended from a
nail on a wooden door decorated with large, elaborate
wrought-iron hinges (fig. 87). There is no indication
that the door is open. It is more solidly built than the
first one; but one of the arms of the upper hinge is
broken, and a hole shows where it was fastened to the
wood with a huge nail. This incongruous motif has a
twofold function. The first is obvious: to break the
monotony of the pattern; the second is deeper: to
negate the effect of solidity that the door displays. It
looks as if somebody had tried to break in, but had
given up even after the hinge had given way.
In 1892, the year of his death, Harnett painted The
Old Cupboard Door (fig. 89). The door that gives the
picture its title has a big keyhole and massive iron
hinges, suggesting that the inside of the cupboard
would be inaccessible if the planks of the door were
£33
intact. As it is, however, the door has openings large
enough to allow a peep inside. A violin with a bow, a
bugle with sheet music, and a group consisting of three
books, a Dutch earthenware jar, and a sheet of music
are arranged in front of the door. One of the books is
the Odyssey, the other an Italian treatise dated 1507.
These heterogeneous objects are on a single plane-
an arrangement which, as I have shown, creates a mys-
terious impression in a trompe Vœil. Here the mystery
is deepened because all these objects obstruct the ap-
proach to the cupboard. Our attention is divided be-
tween the puzzling foreground and the unknown con-
tents of the cupboard behind the broken door.
Harnett said his painting of still life was exclusively
a necessity turned into a virtue. According to his own
statement, it was poverty that determined his choice
of medium and his continuance in it. He could not
afford to hire models, so he said. But this explanation
is not adequate, for his success was enough to remove
all financial difficulties. Moreover, the statement of the
artist does not even touch the most striking problem,
namely, how he came to be devoted to the device of ar-
ranging heterogeneous objects in such a way as to haunt
the spectator by their irrational effect.
The titles of Harnett's still lifes, After a Night's
Study, for instance, or Mortality and Immortdlity, or
Music and Good Luck, suggest superficial features
only: books, a skull, a manuscript, a violin, and a
horseshoe. They do not allude to the ‘deeper meaning,’
to use Panofsky’s phrase. We need to know much more
than we do about Harnett's life in order to unearth the
foundations of his enigmatic work, but we can grasp
an occasional hint which, in the light of other clues,
gives us something to go on. The slips of paper, for
instance, may betray something the painter chose not
to reveal directly. If the fire insurance poster really
suggests a smoldering desire, the photograph of the
little girl might suggest that the actual content of the
old souvenir is the restrained lament of a solitary man
who longs without hope for the return of a childhood
love. One should recall that Harnett was a sick man.
Even during his European travels he tried in vain to
regain his health in Carlsbad, and with equal futility
he visited the Hot Springs of Arkansas. The serious
character of this illness is attested by his early death.
Edouard Roditi interpreted Harnett’s work as ‘necro-
mancy. Although this term is too romantic, it con-
tains a grain of truth: his paintings are the work of a
man who, in the words of the Swiss poet Conrad
Ferdinand Meyer, Lept friends with Death,” who was
conscious of his precarious condition and chose re-
nunciation as his answer to a stern fate. Renunciation,
moreover, was an answer that accorded with his re-