John Haberle
John Haberle
1856 - 1933
American painter and lithographer. The son of German immigrants, he displayed an early talent for drawing. At 14 he was apprenticed to a lithographer in New Haven and subsequently earned his living in that field. His only formal training was at the New York National Academy of Design in 1884. Haberle spent most of his life in New Haven, where he was a founder of the New Haven Sketch Club (1884), gave art lessons and was active in art circles until about 1900. In the 1880s he also worked for the Peabody Museum at Yale University as a preparator and designer, occasionally drawing illustrations for its publications.
Haberle began to practise trompe l’oeil painting, a popular art form in America after the Civil War. Although often employing the same subject-matter as William Michael Harnett and John F. Peto, Haberle was unique in the precision of his trompe l’oeil paintings and in their subtle irony and wit. His humour appears in the Bachelor’s Drawer (1890–94; New York, Met.), which contains a conglomeration of brightly coloured playing cards, ticket stubs, photographs, letters, a cigar box top, currency and newspaper clippings, all representing aspects of a bachelor’s life. They are set against the front of a bureau drawer, defying gravity, and are rendered to exact scale in realistic colours.
In 1889, when Haberle exhibited USA (priv. col.) at the Art Institute of Chicago, an art critic incorrectly accused Haberle, in print, of deception—of gluing objects to the canvas instead of painting them. USA was a trompe l’oeil composition of coins, frayed currency and stamps, which cleverly included a newspaper clipping referring to another composition by Haberle, Imitation (1887; Washington, DC, N.G.A.). The technical expertise that made such illusion possible was perhaps due to Haberle’s early career as an engraver; the surface of his work is smooth, without a trace of brushwork. His Japanese Corner (1898; Springfield, MA, Mus. F.A.) is one of the largest trompe l’oeil paintings in American art (0.91×1.83 m). With dazzling verisimilitude it presents a collection of Japanese furniture, scrolls and bibelots, which were popular at the time. Haberle signed the work with an envelope stuck into the edge of the frame. Written over the typed address is ‘Do Not Touch!’
Despite their apparent detachment, Haberle’s paintings are highly personal, replete with subtle meanings and visual puns. They are also autobiographical, including a painted tintype photograph as a signature, letters addressed to him and readable newspaper clippings reporting on his artistic importance (e.g. ‘Can you break a five?’, c. 1888; Fort Worth, TX, Amon Carter Mus.).
Haberle’s work attracted considerable attention in the 1880s and 1890s and was exhibited widely in America. He fetched high prices from businessmen and saloon-keepers but was ignored by the artistic establishment who thought his subject-matter too commonplace. Due to failing eyesight, Haberle abandoned his career as a trompe l’oeil painter about 1900 and turned to undistinguished impressionistic still-lifes of flowers and animals, clay models and plaster reliefs. He died in obscurity. His work was rediscovered by A. Frankenstein in the 1950s, but in the late 20th century only about half of his known production of about 50 trompe l’oeil paintings had been traced; he also left quantities of small pencil sketches, some in the trompe l’oeil manner. [Gertrude Grace Sill. "Haberle, John." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T035897.]
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
