For the Track

1895

John Frederick Peto

Painter, American, 1854 - 1907

A red jockey’s cap, a riding crop, a horseshoe, a spur, and bits of posters and papers are tacked and pasted against a wooden forest-green door, which fills this vertical painting. At the midline about a third of the way down the composition, the crimson-red cap hangs from a loop on a nail so we look onto the button on the soft top and the rounded brim, below. It overlaps a long, tapered, stick-like riding crop, which angles from the upper right corner to the lower left of the composition. The crop has a shallow knob at its top, and it hangs from a leather strap around another nail driven into the door. Immediately above the red cap is a slightly misshapen horseshoe, the left side of the upside-down U flaring out a little. To the lower right of the cap, the leather straps and metal spur hang from another nail. The cap and crop hang over several pieces of overlapping paper affixed or tacked to the door. The front-most poster has black text printed against a white background. “OAKLEY” appears in all caps across the top like a headline. In smaller letters below it reads, “Race Track” and then “Six Great Races.” Horizontal lines beneath that suggest more text, but it is illegible. The bottom of the poster is ripped, creating an irregular edge. The poster overlaps and mostly obscures a picture of a dark horse against a parchment-brown background. Corners and bits of yellow paper or board, sky-blue fragments, and a peach-colored ticket with the numbers “762” and “112” are affixed around and under the poster. Just beneath and to our right of these overlapping papers, nails pin the four corners of a kelly-green sign that has otherwise been ripped away, the white torn edge showing against the green paper. The black letter “S” is printed in the upper right. The wood door that creates the background for these objects is worn, especially along the vertical edges of the boards. The wood is cracked and split in some areas, and a few bent, rusty nails are partially driven into the wood. Two scrolling hinges to our left are mottled with rust brown and black. Each hinge ends in a three-lobed clover shape. The bottom hinge is broken about two-thirds of the way across the arm, so the end hangs down from the nail in the clover. A keyhole near the right edge of the composition is surrounded by a gold-colored plate. An illegible scrap of a newspaper column is pasted to the door near the top right corner of the composition, and two pieces of paper seem to be tucked into the edge of the painting. A ticket with the numbers “471” printed in large red numerals and again in smaller black numbers, and the letter “H” is tucked into the right edge, near the four corners of the green poster. Finally, the corner of a folded and wrinkled piece of sapphire-blue paper, perhaps an envelope, is tucked in at the bottom center.

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The still-life paintings of John F. Peto are notable not only for their sophisticated qualities of formal design and precise recording of the appearance and textures of the things they depict, but also for their psychological complexity. [1] For the Track,one of his most accomplished late works, presents an array of worn and well-used objects connected with horse racing. Against a dark green painted door are displayed a red jockey's cap, a riding crop, a spur, a thinned and bent horseshoe, betting stubs, a racetrack announcement, a tattered image of a dark horse, and various fragments of torn paper, such as the illegible newspaper clipping at the top right. At the bottom, a dark blue envelope or piece of paper seems to have fallen and become lodged between canvas and frame, enhancing the sense of illusion.

Peto often painted pictures on commission that depict objects such as letters, cards, or pamphlets that made reference to specific patrons. Presumably, the objects depicted in this work also had some personal significance, although we do not know for whom it was painted (an individual's name is not found anywhere on it). But whatever specific meanings it may have held, For the Track clearly refers to one of still-life painting's most enduring themes: the passage of time and the transience of earthly things. The worn surfaces, broken and rusty hinges, bent nails, and torn bits of paper all resonate with a sense of the past, the forgotten, and the discarded. The races have been run, bets have been won or lost, and the rider's equipment—or, at least, these few bits of it—has been hung up, perhaps for good. But the abstract power of Peto's composition and the sheer visual beauty of his bold colors counteract any sense of somber nostalgia, animating the painting with a remarkable aesthetic vitality.

(Text by Franklin Kelly, published in the National Gallery of Art exhibition catalogue, Art for the Nation, 2000)

Notes

1. On Peto, see John Wilmerding,


Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Private collections, from the 1930s;[1] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 1 June 1984, no. 32); purchased through (Hirschl & Adler, New York) by Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., Los Angeles; gift (partial and promised) 1997 to NGA; gift completed 2008.
[1] The painting passed through three generations of one family before its sale in 1984.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2000

  • Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2000-2001, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2002

  • Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l'Oeil Painting, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2002-2003, no. 56, color repro.

2022

  • Hyperreal: The Art of Trompe l'Oeil, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2022, no. 74, repro.

Bibliography

1984

  • "Cole 'View of Boston' May Sell for $1 Million." The New York Times (25 May 1984).

  • Art and Antiques (June 1984): repro. 97.

Inscriptions

lower left: J.F. Peto / 95; center reverse: FOR THE TRACK / J.F. Peto 95 / ISLAND HeIGHTS / N.J

Wikidata ID

Q20190483


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