Fish House Door

An eel-fisher’s tools of the trade are the subject of this late still life by John Frederick Peto, a close associate of William Michael Harnett, the other great trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) still-life painter of the late 19th century. Peto often chose to represent doors with objects hanging on or tacked to them, such as in this work. He frequently included highly personal symbolic details in the seemingly random assemblages.