Curriculum Materials: Art in America
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Image 15 John F. Peto Questions: |
Reminiscences of 1865
Shortly after John Peto's father died in 1895, the artist began a series of paintings alluding to death, Lincoln, and the war. Although he was only 11 years old in 1865, he commemorated the events of that year in the painting Reminiscences of 1865, done some 35 years later. The varied images in this painting probably reflect personal as well as historical concerns.
What we see is actually just paint on a flat canvas. Through a precise rendering of details, Peto created the illusion of actual objects on a worn wooden door. The focal point is the black-and-white image of Lincoln that Peto reproduced from an ENGRAVING of a photograph. It gives the appearance of being an actual photograph stuck to the door with a brass tack. Adjacent to the image, Lincoln's nickname, Abe, appears to be carved in SUNKEN RELIEF into the door, as does the year of his death. His birth year, 1809, gives the appearance of being carved in RAISED RELIEF so that the numbers stand out from the door.
Currency was a favorite subject of STILL LIFE painters in this age obsessed with money. (This was a time when fortunes could be made, despite the poverty of many.) In Peto's painting, a 25-cent "shinplaster," a worthless piece of paper money, is attached below a tarnished coin. The image of the man on the shinplaster is Robert Walker, who was Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln and an avowed abolitionist. His image may refer to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which technically freed slaves in Confederate territories in 1862.
Everything in this painting shows the signs of time. The
painted door is weathered, the lock is broken and rusted,
the nails are bent. The photograph's edges curl, and only
tattered pieces of paper remain, the rest having been torn
away or worn off. The paint around these papers is clearly
more faded than that which lay underneath, protected from
the sun, possibly for decades. Beside the papers, faded
columns of numbers written in chalk are barely visible.
Peto arranged these elements within
the rectangular design of the door to create a sense of
order. The muted greens and tans reinforce the worn and
weathered appearance of the objects and the door.
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