Two Ounces, 1877

Provenance

Noah Goldowsky, Inc., New York, New York

Newhouse Galleries, New York, New York

Adelson Galleries, New York, New York

Private collection

Sale, Christie’s, New York, New York, December 5, 2002, lot 44, from above

Private collection, Maine, acquired from above

Exhibited

Noah Goldowsky, Inc., New York, New York, American 19^th Century Still Life Paintings, 1972

The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland, 19th Century American Still Life Painting, February 20–April 22, 1973

Literature

Alfred Frankenstein, After the Hunt: William Harnett and Other American Still Life Painters 1870–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 167, no. 27A.

American 19^th Century Still Life Paintings (New York: Noah Goldowsky, Inc., 1972), cover, 3 no. 13.

Related Works

A Man’s Table Reversed, 1877, oil on canvas, 20¾ x 18¾ inches, signed and dated lower right; Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania

Mynheer’s Lunch, 1879, oil on canvas, 12½ x 10½ inches, signed and dated lower left; Private collection

Still Life with Pipe and Mug, 1880, oil on canvas, 9 x 12 2/16 inches; Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

New York Daily News, 1888, oil on wood, 5½ x 7½ inches, signed and dated lower right; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

Note: Speaking on the 1972 exhibition American 19^th Century Still Life Paintings, historian William H. Gerdts wrote, “the masterwork of this collection, however, is the oil by William Michael Harnett, Two Ounces, of 1877. It is one of the most beautiful and typical of Harnett’s works of late 1870’s, and totally characteristic of his many innovations, not only of style but of subject–the newspaper, smoking, and beer-drinking still-lifes which he so popularized.”[1]

[1] American 19^th Century Still Life Paintings (New York: Noah Goldowsky, Inc., 1972), 3.