“The Art Institute was yesterday afternoon the scene of a delicate and interesting experiment, upon the result of which a personal reputation may be said to have rested and certainly upon which the merit of a work of presumptive art did depend,” The Chicago Daily News reported on July 3, 1889. The personal reputation to which it referred was that of New Haven artist, John Haberle. At the time, Haberle’s painting, U.S.A., (Indianapolis Museum of Art) was hanging in the main gallery of Chicago’s decade-old art museum, attracting much scrutiny and speculation.
A small oil on canvas, the painting depicts several familiar objects including coins, paper currency and postage stamps rendered in the then fashionable trompe l’oeil (fool the eye) style. The bills and stamps quickly became the tempest in the Chicago art world’s teapot with one prominent critic publicly denouncing the work as a fraud. As a result, according to the newspaper, Haberle was reached in “far distant” New Haven where, “roused by the critical critique, he made a hasty journey hither.” Once Haberle arrived, the painting was removed from its frame in the presence of art experts and the press who watched as “the lens was used, the paint was rubbed off, and the whole ingenious design proved really an imitative work of art, and most excellent one.”
Haberle, known for his wry sense of humor which speaks to the viewer in his early (1882) self-portrait, That’s Me!, and appears in the details of many of his paintings, surely had a satisfied chuckle on his way back to New Haven. No doubt, the incident also contributed to the artist’s good-natured endeavors to poke fun at the press with the carefully rendered clippings he included in his work throughout his career.
The man whose unique combination of painting style and technique would eventually become internationally known was born on Ashman Street to German immigrant parents in 1856. He and his older sister attended Webster School. At fourteen, his father, whom he credited with recognizing his artistic inclination, apprenticed him with Punderson and Crisland, one of New Haven’s finest lithographers at the time. He spent three years learning his craft—a time during which he also produced his first professional work, a finely detailed pencil drawing of statuary in Evergreen Cemetery called New Haven Monuments.
Haberle then spent a year working as an engraver in Montreal, returning to New Haven in 1875 to set up his own studio on Winthrop Avenue. Soon he was doing illustrations for paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh who, at the time, was preparing to open Yale’s Peabody Museum. Haberle was also enlisted by Marsh to repair fossils, arrange specimens and paint scenery for displays.
In his spare time, Haberle began the pursuit of a fine art career. His early watercolor, Yellow Canary, (Yale University Art Gallery) portrays a lifeless bird suspended in front of cigar box top and evidences his budding interest in trompe l’oeil, a style which Philadelphia artist, William Harnett had introduced to Americans in the previous decade. Haberle became a founding member of the New Haven Sketch Club where he taught regularly, and, in 1883, he applied for admission to the National Academy of Design which he attended the following year. By 1885 he was back in New Haven with a portfolio of paintings that employed what he then called his ‘imitative’ technique.
His reputation quickly grew. In 1887, he submitted Imitation (The National Archives) to the National Academy’s fall exhibition. The painting which depicts bills, coins, stamps and a tintype of Haberle soon prompted Harnett himself to declare “no artist has yet equaled Haberle in the imitation of bills and stamps.” Although he offered Fresh Roasted: Peanuts (Yale University Art Gallery) that year for the Sketch Club’s December exhibition, he soon returned to depicting currency with Can You Break a Five? (Amon Carter Museum of American Art) and Reproduction. Both include representations of newspaper clippings—one proclaiming Haberle to be a Counter[feiter]”.
By this time, he was so successful in his efforts in this trompe l’oeil sub-genre that he was admonished by federal authorities to “cease and desist” from painting American currency. He did not. Along with 1890’s nostalgic Grandma’s Hearthstone (Detroit Institute of Arts) he completed Twenty Dollar Bill, One Dollar Bill and A Deception: Ben Franklin and Five Dollars, in which he chose to depict the reverse side of the bill which, at the time, included a lengthy warning about the consequences of reproducing federal currency. A small clipping portrayed in the upper corner declares “J. Haberle—New Haven, Conn”, doubtlessly copied from his own newspaper advertisements.
The financial success Haberle’s work brought allowed him to purchase a parcel of land overlooking the harbor in Morris Cove where he built a house and studio. He next worked on his autobiographical tour-de-force, A Bachelor’s Drawer (Metropolitan Museum of Art)—a humorous showcase of his personal mementos. But, by 1893, his eyesight began to fail. Gradually, impressionist still lifes like Grapes on a Ledge (Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum) began to appear, although he produced well-received trompe l’oeil pieces including Slate (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and Torn in Transit (Brandywine River Museum of Art) as late as 1909.
At his death in 1933, Haberle was still residing in the Cove Street house. When Sanford Law, founding director of the New Britain Museum of American Art, visited the artist’s daughter, Vera, there to negotiate the purchase of Of Time and Eternity (NBMAA) in 1951, the originals of all the clippings Haberle had included in his work were still on display, carefully pasted to cardboard mounts.
(An edited version of this has appeared in The Daily Nutmeg.)
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