John Haberle

John Haberle (1856–1933) was an American painter in the trompe-l'œil (literally, "fool the eye") style. His still lifes of ordinary objects are painted in such a way that the painting can be mistaken for the objects themselves. He is considered one of the three major figures—together with William Harnett and John F. Peto—practicing this form of still life painting in the United States in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Early life and training Haberle was born in 1856 in New Haven, Connecticut, and was the son of Swabian immigrants. At the age of 14 he left school to apprentice with an engraver. He also worked for many years as an illustrator and exhibit preparator for the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, working under the supervision of the paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. Haberle began taking classes at the National Academy of Design in New York City in 1884, where he first encountered trompe-l'œil painting.

A Bachelor's Drawer (1890–1894) is typical of his approach: various papers, including currency, postage stamps, photos, playing cards, tickets, and newspaper clippings, are shown affixed to an essentially planar surface. Other objects—eyeglasses, a comb, a pipe, matches, and so on—are shallow enough in volume so as not to spoil the illusion.

Like Harnett, he was warned by the Secret Service to cease and desist painting paper money, but he continued to do so throughout his years of greatest productivity; examples include The Changes of Time (1888) and Can You Break a Five? (c. 1885). He painted other subjects such as Slate (c. 1895), a bin of peanuts in Fresh Roasted (1887), The Clay Pipe (1889), and the huge Grandma's Hearthstone (1890), in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Over the course of his career, Haberle exhibited work at art institutions such as the National Academy of Design in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Due to the popular appeal of Haberle's style and subject matter, his work was also shown in venues not conventionally known for displaying art, such as bookstores, saloons, liquor stores, and hotels.

Following some decades of obscurity after his death, Haberle's oeuvre of some forty trompe l'oeil paintings was later identified and reevaluated by the art historian Alfred Frankenstein.