Harnett, True and False

Abstract

THE REVIVAL of interest in the paintings of William Michael Harnett, which began just ten years ago, represents, to a certain degree, a vindication of nineteenth century bourgeois taste. For the bourgeoisie loved Harnett in his own time, bought his pictures at respectable prices, and hung them up for all the world to see in their homes and in that prime center of Victorian enlightenment, the corner saloon. Today, after an interlude of dust in the back rooms of neighborhood junk shops, these paintings are on the walls again, in the residences of private collectors, and in public museums.