PUBLIC FAVORITE (21)

A retiring Victorian bachelor named William Harnett was probably the best of all U.S. still-life painters. His After the Hunt is the public favorite at San Francisco's California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Harnett painted it for the Paris Salon of 1885, "to discover whether or not the line of work I had been pursuing had or had not artistic merit." Paris liked the picture.

Harnett's mellow, meticulous style was not easily achieved. A poor boy, he began by selling papers, later made a living engraving silverware. He studied painting at night. Since he could not afford live models, he painted still lifes. Their extreme realism impressed the public from the first.

Harnett's description of his working method is almost bare of helpful hints to aspiring still-life painters: "I always group my figures so as to try and make an artistic composition . . . The chief difficulty I have found has not been the grouping of my models but their choice . . . Take for instance the handle of the old sword [in After the Hunt) . . . Had I chosen a sword with an ivory handle of a different tint, the tone of the picture would have been ruined." Then with stunning inconsistency he adds: "In painting from still life, I do not closely imitate nature."

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