90.17 x 65.09 cm (35 1/2 x 25 5/8 in.)
Oil on canvas and panel

Inscriptions: Upper left: J.F. Peto/85

Classification: Paintings

Object is currently not on view

John Frederick Peto's painting of a shabby but colorful storefront window belongs to the school of trompe l'oeil paintings associated with William Harnett. It is an early masterpiece in a career that stretched from 1877, when Peto enrolled for a year at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, until his death thirty years later. While living in Philadelphia, Peto became friendly with Harnett and borrowed many of his subjects and compositional devices, although he worked in his own distinct, more painterly style. The canvas of The Poor Man's Store depicts brightly colored candies, peanuts, gingerbread, and fruit for sale. It is surrounded by a wooden frame illusionistically painted to simulate a door, shelf, and wall.
Such shop windows were characteristic of Philadelphia during the nineteenth century. A contemporary reviewer described one of Peto's earlier paintings of the same subject in the Philadelphia Record in 1880:
[It] cleverly illustrates a familiar phase of our street life, and presents upon canvas one of the most prominent of Philadelphia's distinctive features. A rough, ill-constructed board shelf holds the "Poor Man's Store"-a half dozen rosy-cheeked apples, some antique gingerbread, a few jars of cheap confectionery "Gibraltars" and the like, and, to give all a proper finish and lend naturalness to the decorative surroundings of the goods, a copy of The Record has been spread beneath.
It was not unusual for Peto to paint several versions of a theme, and this description suggests that the Museum's picture is similar to the painting described except for the presence of the newspaper in the earlier work. Instead, it has been replaced by signs advertising "lodging" and "good board $3.00 a week." The hanging metal number-plate above the window, the piece of string, and the torn remains of notices were some of Peto's favorite devices, each one painted to add to the illusionistic effect.
Peto's penchant for portraying humble, derelict objects in disordered arrangements may account for his lack of wealthy patrons during his lifetime. After working in Philadelphia, he moved to Island Heights, New Jersey, in 1891, where he was largely forgotten by the Philadelphia art world. In the early twentieth century an unscrupulous art dealer forged Harnett's name on many of Peto's works in order to sell them more readily. It was not until mid-century that the paintings were reattributed and Peto began to be appreciated as one of the preeminent still-life painters of the late nineteenth century. His work is generally darker and more melancholy than Harnett's and often reflects both his own unhappy family life and the nation's grief following the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whose image he frequently included in his paintings.

This text was adapted from Davis, et al., MFA Highlights: American Painting (Boston, 2003) available at www.mfashop.com/mfa-publications.html.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Gift of Maxim Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815–1865, 1962
Accession number: 62.278

Provenance/Ownership History: The artist; private collection, East Orange, N.J.; Mrs. Raymond Dey, Preakness, N.J., about 1940; John Kenneth Byard, Silvermine, Conn.; Miss Mary Allis, Southport, Conn., about 1943; with Albert Duveen, NY; to Maxim Karolik, Newport, R.I., 1951; to MFA, 1962, gift of Maxim Karolik.

This object is included in the following Selected Tour(s):

• American Paintings
• American Paintings Highlights
• MFA Images: Still Life