1879
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Memento Mori, "To This Favour" is a 1879 unspecified by William Michael Harnett, a American Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a skull, an hourglass with all the sand run out, a snuffed candle, and a beat-up book open to a line from *Hamlet*. Harnett painted these objects so real you want to touch them. The trick is called *trompe l’oeil*—French for “fool the eye.” The Latin title means “remember you must die,” a quiet nudge to think about time running out. If you like these eerie little still-lifes, look up *chiaroscuro*.
The Latin term memento mori describes a traditional subject in art that addresses mortality. In Harnett’s example, the extinguished candle, spent hourglass, and skull symbolize death. A quote from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet , inscribed on the inside cover of a tattered book, reinforces the theme. It comes from the play’s famed graveyard scene where Hamlet discovers a skull and grimly ponders his beloved Ophelia, ironically unaware that she is already dead. The "paint" in the quote not only refers to Ophelia’s makeup, but also wittily evokes the artifice of Harnett’s picture.
Harnett’s family left Ireland during the potato famine and emigrated to the United States.
Read the full account in the museum source.
William Michael Harnett (August 10, 1848 – October 29, 1892) was an American painter known for his trompe-l'œil still lifes of ordinary objects.
See the richer artist page
