John Haberle

The objects hanging from this rough surface would have been familiar to Haberle’s audience. The cracked pocket watch becomes a symbol of the fleeting quality of time, a reference to the traditional vanitas still lifes of the Dutch and Flemish Baroque masters. The playing cards, pawn tickets, betting receipts, and girlie photo are the detritus of daily life; juxtaposed with the rosary they are an obvious contrast between the temporal and the spiritual, the here and now and the hereafter. Haberle’s torn, ragged scraps of paper currency also refer to the passage of time; the word GRAVE (part of the word engraved) is a blatant reference to death, emphasized by the scrap’s proximity to the crucifix.

The moralizing message of the painting is obvious, yet Haberle, in his paintings, often added a note of complexity to the mix by addressing current events. By juxtaposing traditional symbols of vanitas with references to well-known public controversies, Haberle has asked his audience to think for themselves on the profound philosophical and scientific issues that were filtering through late-nineteenth-century society.

The extreme detail and realism made trompe-l’oeils hugely popular with the public, but late nineteenth-century art critics derided such works as mere parlor tricks which lacked art.

Yet Haberle’s works aim not only to fool the eye, but are often ingenious, extremely witty, and entertaining. A rebus waiting to be deciphered, they are an expression of the social and political ideas of the artist’s time.