PORTLAND – The Portland Museum of Art opens an exhibition next weekend focusing on the life and work of John Haberle, considered to be one of the most accomplished American trompe l’oeil painters. The term references a style of painting meant to fool one’s eye.
The show opens on the second floor on Saturday, and remains on view through Dec. 12.
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Haberle, who lived from 1856 to 1933, combined technique with historical and personal references to American life from 1870 to 1910.
The exhibition will feature about 20 paintings and drawings from the New Britain Museum of American Art, and one from a local collector.
Alluding to the moral and political issues of the time, Haberle’s paintings juxtapose newspaper clippings, tickets and money with objects such as a pocket watch, playing cards and rosary beads. The details make Haberle’s paintings complex.
He spent most of his life in or near his hometown of New Haven, Conn., where he worked as an engraver, draftsman, lithographer and as a custodian and preparator at Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History.
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