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An American Notebook Series A series of nineteenth century American paintings by William Michael Harnett (1848-1892), John F. Peto (1854-1907), and John Haberle (1856-1933) form a distinctive genre of still-life-itself, a catalogue as well as a denial of decay and death. These paintings use as their subject matter the personal noticeboard, letter rack and chalkboard, to which are attached collections of personal documents - letters, portrait photographs, certificates, heirlooms etc. Rather than evoke the grand narratives-an omission which might partly account for their lapse into relative obscurity - these documents quietly suggest another cherished myth of America, the saga of the "little man." Into these "quiet narratives," I have inserted hidden or silenced narratives, whose absence or translucence form meta - but subtextual narratives - the other America, as it were. J.F. Peto's 1904/6 A Closet Door, opens to reveal popular images about EuroAmerica's relationship to Native Americans, a fantasy of contamination and invasion ironically enacted upon the body of America such as a painting of a Native American attack on a settler woman, (The Death of Jane McCrea, John Vanderlyn, 1804).* Next to it is a title from a Jimmie Durham artwork, Savage Attacks On White Women, As Usual. Other images include film stills, advertising posters, and A Dash For The Timber, 1889, Frederic Remington's painting of cowboys fleeing a band of "marauding" Indians. The Lone Ranger and Tonto, that archetypal "noble savage," - subdued and loyal - hover between fore- and background. Into J.F. Peto's 1879 Office Board for Smith Bros., I have inserted images from the Gulf War, while George Bush looks joyously on. On Haberle's 1895 The Slate, Leave Your Order Here, the ghostly imprint of a slave ship, slave shackles and an auctioneer's notice emerge, while below, Civil Rights marchers stride across a smoldering background. * "Scalped on her wedding day by Indians, who were then being employed by General Burgoyne as the British were moving south in 1777, Jane McCrea became a symbol of innocence confronted by evil, virtue crushed by cruelty, civilized man attacked by the savage." The Genius of American Painting, ed. John Wilmerding, 1973.
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