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Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: John Frederick Peto, Lincoln and the Star of David, 1904

John Frederick Peto American, 1854-1907

Lincoln and the Star of David, 1904
Oil on canvas
20 x 14 inches
50.8 x 35.6 cm
Signed and dated at lower left: John F. Peto / 1904
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In 1904, John Frederick Peto painted Lincoln and the Star of David, one of about a dozen pictures devoted to the Abraham Lincoln theme from the 1890s and early 1900s....
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In 1904, John Frederick Peto painted Lincoln and the Star of David, one of about a dozen pictures devoted to the Abraham Lincoln theme from the 1890s and early 1900s. Peto’s fascination with Lincoln as subject has been connected to his own father’s death in 1895, and it has been suggested that he identified with the slain president as a lost father figure. Peto experimented with imagery and formats in the Lincoln series, and almost always included an image of Lincoln that was widely available at the time: “the source of this likeness, an engraving, was a commonly reproduced and available print, and Peto owned a copy which he made use of for almost all of these paintings. It shows the tears and abrasions of much handling, but Peto also strengthened certain details with pencil, such as Lincoln’s beard, and he repeatedly pressed into the outlines of the president’s face, presumably as a means of transferring it exactly.” [1] Peto took great care when rendering Lincoln in Lincoln and the Star of David. Also included are several trompe l’oeil elements that each evoke the passage of time: the warped and aging wood board, the trailing string with a frayed end, the cigarette and match that have been extinguished. The legacy of the trompe-l’oeil technique extends into the twentieth century through modernist movements including Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism and continues to capture the attention of audiences today. In October 2022, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, opened an important exhibition dedicated to the technique, Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition.


[1] John Wilmerding, Important Information Inside, Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1982, p. 189.

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Provenance

The artist; 
Mrs. George Smiley, Island Heights, New Jersey, by 1950;
Estate of Edith G. Halpert; to
[Sale: Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, March 14, 1973, lot 14]; to
[Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York]; to
Private collection;
[Sale: Sotheby's, New York, November 29, 1995, lot 95]; to
Walter B. and Marcia F. Goldfarb, Portland Maine; to
Estate of Walter B. Goldfarb, 2021

Exhibitions

The Brooklyn Museum, New York; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; John F. Peto, March 1-July 9, 1950, no. 43
Montclair Museum, New Jersey, December 1952
Hirschl & Adler, New York, Quality: An Experience in Collecting, November 12-December 7, 1974, no. 37, illus.
Portland Museum of Art, Maine, Objects of Wonder: Four Centuries of Still Life from the Norton Museum of Art, February 4-June 6, 2010
Portland Museum of Art, Maine, A Magnificent Stillness: American Art from a Private Collection, June 26-November 8, 2015
Jewish Museum, New York, Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art, October 18, 2019-February 9, 2020

Literature

Alfred Frankenstein, After the Hunt: William Harnett and Other American Still-Life Painters 1870-1900, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969, pp. 110-11
John Wilmerding, “Images of Lincoln in Peto’s Late Paintings,” Archives of American Art Journal, vol. XXII, no. 2, 1982, pp. 6, 8, illus. fig. 5
John Wilmerding, Important Information Inside: The Art of John F. Peto and the Idea of Still-Life Painting in Nineteenth Century America, Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1983, p. 194, illus. fig. 183
Roberta Smith, "A Forgotten Pioneer's Art World Is Resurrected at the Jewish Museum," The New York Times, November 7, 2019
Robert Goldblum, "The Week in Arts & Culture: Last Chance: Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 5, 2020, jta.org/2020/02/05/ny/this-week-in-film-comedy-theater-music-latter-day-jew-ari-shaffir-ashley-blaker-shai-bachar
Rebecca Shaykin, Edith Halpert: The Downtown Gallery and the Rise of American Art, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019, p. 109, illus. p. 201
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