Market Basket, Hat, and Umbrella

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Market Basket, Hat, and Umbrella

Artist John Frederick Peto American, 1854 - 1907

Date1900

DimensionsFrame: 19 × 24 3/4 × 2 1/2 in. (48.3 × 62.9 × 6.4 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineA gift to the Museum in honor of Susan Palmer by her husband Thomas, daughter Emily and her family

Object number

2018.35

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 29

Label TextThis remarkable and deceptively simple still life composition balances shape, color, light, and shadow in a harmonious and visually satisfying way. The group of objects—a woven reed basket containing a striped umbrella, a red bandana, and a wide-brimmed straw hat with a black band—suggests an outing to the market. Silhouetted against a dark background and positioned on a rich, green surface, the basket and its contents seem to glow warmly in a spot of sunlight. Warm yellow-browns balance cooler greens and blues, and the overall horizontality of the arrangement is broken by the strong diagonal of the hat. Philadelphia artist John Frederick Peto’s eye for composition and his use of color and texture have often been compared to 18th-century French painter Chardin (see two paintings by this artist in Gallery 27), and it is plausible that Peto was aware of Chardin’s work. Market Basket, Hat, and Umbrella also resonates with the nearby Still Life with the ‘Toledo Blade’ of 1886 by Peto’s fellow realist still life painter and friend William Harnett.