Peto, John Frederick

Peto, John Frederick (1854–1907) painter; born in Philadelphia. Drawn to art and music as a youth, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (c. 1877) and adopted the trompe l'oeil style associated with the then popular William Harnett. His illusionistic still-lifes portrayed objects like advertising cards, photographs, and worn objects in such paintings as Ordinary Objects in the Artist's Creative Mind (1887). By 1889 he had settled in Island Heights, N.J., where his work became more brooding, and he faded from public view. Not until the art historian Alfred Frankenstein discovered his works in the 1940s did he gain a reputation as a true artist.