Lights of Other Days (1906): Artwork and History

Lights of Other Days (1906) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as John Frederick Peto (American, 1854–1907).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Lights of Other Days, like many of John F. Peto’s still lifes, is replete with nostalgia. Strewn along a shallow shelf above a doorframe is an array of old, well-worn objects: candleholders with wax candles nearly used up, rusty oil lamps, and torn books. These discarded commonplace objects allude to older ways of life and fading memories. Peto specialized in trompe l’oeil (fools the eye) pictures; yet his soft-edged style is suggestive of the artist’s hand rather than the heightened illusionism employed by other trompe l’oeil painters such as William Harnett. Trained in Philadelphia, Peto stopped exhibiting his work at professional venues by 1890, creating compositions instead for local patrons near his New Jersey home.

Object facts

• Title: Lights of Other Days
• Date: 1906
• Artist attribution: John Frederick Peto (American, 1854–1907)
• Place of origin: United States
• Medium: Oil on canvas
• Dimensions: 77.5 × 115 cm (30 1/2 × 45 1/4 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Arts of the Americas
• Reference number: 1956.125

Collection credit

Goodman Fund

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.