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John
Haberle, Imitation, 1887, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
New Century Fund, Gift of the Amon G. Carter Foundation 1998.96.1 |
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What made money such a popular subject for these trompe l'oeil artists? Harnett, Peto, and Haberle painted in the last decades of the nineteenth century, a time of materialism and financial empires—the Gilded Age. It was the era of the Greenback party, with its promise to issue great quantities of treasury notes if elected (causing the public anxiety over the stability of the currency). These artists were also playing with the notion of value, by asking viewers to consider the value of, for example, a real five dollar bill versus the value of a five dollar bill rendered as a work of art. |
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