The Fish House Door

A masterful practitioner of trompe l’oeil painting—a still-life genre intended to “fool the eye” into perceiving a flat image as a three-dimensional arrangement—Peto received little attention in his lifetime. A native Philadelphian, Peto studied at the Pennsylvania Academy and became friends with the leading trompe l’oeil painter William Michael Harnett. Peto developed his own idiosyncratic, more subjective mode of illusionistic painting, softening the typically crisp edges, revealing rather than laboring to conceal brushstrokes, and showing great sensitivity to the play of light on different objects. Peto also favored worn, shabby objects for his still lifes, which were evocative but unpopular with buyers who wanted pretty images. In spite of this, dealers sometimes forged Harnett’s signature on Peto’s work, knowing the value of the more successful artist’s name.