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| John Frederick Peto |
| 1854-1907 |
| American Artist |
| Born in Philadelphia in 1854, John Frederick Peto was raised in that city and is first listed in the 1876 Philadelphia directory as a painter residing on Chestnut Street, a favorite neighborhood of that city’s artists. Peto was a musician as well as a painter, playing the cornet in the Fire Department Band and at religious meetings. He studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.A master of tabletop still life pictures as well as vertically oriented rack and door pictures, Peto’s paintings are notable for the realism of their worn and shabby objects. Because the articles depicted show wear and the effects of time, his paintings did not appeal to popular nineteenth-century taste, which valued more opulent imagery. He never received the public acclaim and support that Harnett did. Devoting his life to his family and to painting in his solitary studio, surrounded by the battered books, lamps, mugs, and pipes that appear in his art. Isolated in this riverside town, his career began to decline. Beset by poverty, family problems, and ill health, Peto died in Island Heights on November 23, 1907. |
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