Peto, John F.

Peto, John F.

(pē`tō), 1854–1907, American painter, b. Philadelphia. Largely self-taught, Peto worked in the exacting style of trompe l'oeil illusionismillusionism,
in art, a kind of visual trickery in which painted forms seem to be real. It is sometimes called trompe l'oeil [Fr.,=fool the eye]. The development of one-point perspective in the Renaissance advanced illusionist technique immeasurably.
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 perfected by William HarnettHarnett, William Michael
, 1848–92, American painter, b. Ireland. He emigrated to Philadelphia as a child; he first learned engraving and then studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and at the National Academy of Design and Cooper Union.
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. He sought to put down precisely what he saw without embellishment, choosing still-life subjects from 19th-century American life. These included weathered wood panels, lanterns, and scraps of paper. His Old Cremona (Metropolitan Mus.) is a characteristic work.