Nika Elder

This dissertation offers a revised and systematic interpretation of the still lifes of the latenineteenth-century American painter William M. Harnett. The artist’s trompe l’oeil canvases have long been considered exemplary of the pervasive preoccupation with illusionism and deception in the Gilded Age. Rather, I consider the entirety of Harnett’s career through the lens of still life and situate his paintings in their cultural and intellectual context to understand the aesthetic imperatives behind his idiosyncratic practice. I argue that Harnett explored the social and cultural functions of different types of objects, experimented with composition, and exploited the interactive quality of trompe l’oeil in order to redefine painting as a linguistic medium—a way to render ideas material and, consequently, intelligible. The paintings themselves thus became objects that were intended to both visualize and stimulate the processes of logic and reason. As such, Harnett’s work takes its place in, and illuminates, the pervasive reevaluation of material culture (the way in which objects were made to mean) in his day. In the context of the decline of the art academy and the rise of the public museum, as well as the explosion of consumer culture and the delineation of Pragmatist thought, William Harnett sought to imbue both the process and the product of painting with cognitive potential.