Wednesday, December 24, 2014

JOHN FREDERICK PETO at Auction and at the National Gallery of Art




Sotheby's 2014



JOHN FREDERICK PETO
STILL LIFE WITH MARKET BASKET, HAT AND UMBRELLA

LOT SOLD. 81,250 

JOHN FREDERICK PETO
OLD HOUSE AT COOPER'S POINT, NEW JERSEY
LOT SOLD. 10,625


Sotheby's 2013


Estimation   15,000  25,000



JOHN FREDERICK PETO
STILL LIFE WITH ORANGES AND A BOX OF CONFECTIONS
Estimate 60,000 — 80,000

Sotheby's May 2015
 A REDISCOVERED  TROMPE-L’OEIL PAINTING BY JOHN FREDERICK PETO  



While  trompe-l’oeil  has clear art historical precedents in antiquity  as well as 17 th and 18 th century Europe, Peto skillfully adapts the  technique to 19 th century America in Old Time Letter Rack from 1894 (estimate $800,0 00–1.2 million). He fills the composition  with autobiographical referenc es: his inclusion of envelopes  postmarked Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, as well as another  addressed to Peto himself in Island Heights, New Jersey and the copy of Dayton’s  Evening Herald  newspaper, refer to the period in the late 1880s and early 1890s during which he traveled regularly  between Ohio and New Jersey.  Old Time Letter Rack was  discovered in California in 2006; its previous history is unknown, as is typical of many of his works.
Sotheby's 2012

JOHN FREDERICK PETO
JUG, BOOK, BOX AND MUG
Estimate 15,000 — 25,000
Sotheby's 2011

JOHN FREDERICK PETO
WINE AND BRASS STEWING KETTLE (PREPARATION OF FRENCH POTAGE)


LOT SOLD. 37,500 


JOHN FREDERICK PETO
STEIN AND BISCUITS



LOT SOLD. 31,250
JOHN FREDERICK PETO
STILL LIFE WITH BOOKS



LOT SOLD. 22,500 
Sotheby's 2010
JOHN FREDERICK PETO
1854 - 1907
OFFICE BOARD FOR JOHN FREDERICK PETO



LOT SOLD. 206,500



JOHN FREDERICK PETO
STILL LIFE WITH MILK CAN AND BISCUITS
LOT SOLD. 25,000 



Biography

The still life painter John Frederick Peto was born in 1854 in Philadelphia. In 1878 he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he exhibited between 1879 and 1888. There he met and befriended William Michael Harnett, whose trompe l'oeil still lifes exerted a decisive influence on his career. Peto opened a studio in 1880, and earned a meager living by painting rack pictures for Philadelphia's aesthetically unsophisticated business and professional men. He was reputed to have made photographic and painted portraits to support himself. In 1887 he married Christine Pearl Smith of Leredo, Ohio. An able cornetist, he began to perform for the Methodist Island Heights Camp Meeting Association in New Jersey, where he built a house in 1889. Peto painted in semi-seclusion and obscurity there for the remainder of his life. He died in Island Heights in 1907.

Peto was almost completely forgotten until 1949, when Alfred Frankenstein published an article in which he identified nineteen paintings from major private collections and museums that had been attributed to Harnett but had really been painted by Peto. With the advent of further interest and research on American still life painting, Peto gradually emerged as a distinct artistic personality whose work could be differentiated from Harnett's by its looser brushwork, warm tonality, and aura of subtle melancholy created by his tendency to represent objects deteriorated by age. He painted a wide variety of still life subjects, comprising letter racks holding printed matter, shelves of books, tabletops, and doors with hanging musical instruments.

Skinner 2006




John Frederick Peto (American, 1854-1907) 

Still Life with Books and Pipe

Sold for: 
$149,000 



Bonhams 2013


JOHN FREDERICK PETO
(American, 1854-1907)
Still life with books 
9 x 12in
US$ 20,000 - 30,000

Christie's 2013





                   

Christie's 2011








Christie's 2007




Christie's 2000








Christie's 1996





National Gallery of Art, Washington DC