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Artist
John F. Peto
Title
In the Library
Date
1894-1900
Culture
American
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
76.2 x 101.6 cm (30 x 40 in.)
Accession Number
2000:001
Credit Line
John F. Peto, In the Library, 1894-1900, oil on canvas, 76.2 x 101.6 cm (30 x 40 in.), Putnam Foundation, Timken Museum of Art
Full view of In the Library
Description
John F. Peto received his training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he also exhibited his work from 1870 to 1887. Following a move to Island Heights, New Jersey, in 1889, Peto ceased to exhibit and ultimately was forgotten. The books and pamphlets in this painting are indicative of the worn and slightly battered commonplace objects favored by Peto. The use of soft light and subdued colors-punctuated by are
as of bright blue and orange-is typical of the artist's style, which imbues this composition with its rather somber, elegiac mood. 

Related Information / Media

Provenance

Private collection, Philadelphia, reportedly by family descent for four generations, ca. 1900–1999 [documented from ca. 1931 as with Harriet Edkins; To her daughter Helen Edkins Campbell, 1973; To J. Stewart Campbell, her husband, 1977; To James S. Campbell and Harriet R. Campbell Young, their children, 1999]; Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1999; Acquired by the Putnam Foundation, 2000

Exhibited

New York, Kennedy Galleries, 1999-2000, American Masters from Copley to Hopper, no. 7.

Literature

American Masters from Copley to Hopper (New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1999), no. 7, ill. (detail ill. on front cover); Kelly Devine Thomas,“
Collecting in Cyberspace, ”Artnews 99, no. 1 (January 2000):133.