Office Board

John F. Peto

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Peto’s numerous “rack” pictures were often commissioned, and many contain clues to the identities of their original owners in the objects stuck behind the crisscrossed tape. In this example, a postcard and an envelope are clearly addressed to Dr. Bernard Goldberg, a chiropodist and a neighbor of Peto’s in Philadelphia. The doctor may well have asked the artist to make the painting. Among the items depicted is a portrait, presumably of the doctor, perhaps representing an actual photograph taken by Peto. As seen here, Peto strove for decorative effects of color and texture and was less interested in illusionistic realism than was William Michael Harnett.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art