Our Winter Art Show

In A Favorite , painted about 1890 (left), John Haberle creates the illusion of a ramshackle assemblage of pipe, cigar-box lid, and matches on a yellow pine board. Trompe l’oeil paintings like this one decorated the nation’s barrooms and hotel lobbies during the 1880s and 1890s, and masculine subjects like smoking and hunting were steady favorites. Haberle’s work stands well above that of his contemporaries because of his sense of humor, evident here in details like the missing nails and the caricature of himself smoking above his signature.