Public data from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Learn more
Card Rack with a Jack of Hearts
About the Artwork
Like modern-day bulletin boards, card racks were used to gather newspaper clippings, scraps of paper, and other ephemera in one place. Although it is unclear if the items seen here carry symbolic meaning, they nevertheless demonstrate the human desire to collect and recollect. Their tattered state and frayed edges further evoke a sense of memory and nostalgia. The illusionistic quality of Peto’s pictures makes the objects appear to exist in real space. Even the cigarette butt perched at the bottom looks ready to be plucked from the painting’s frame.
Inscriptions
Signed upper right: "J F P"
Provenance
1973-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio 1972-1973: (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) Probably 1965-1972: Alice Kaplan [1903-1995], New York, NY1 By 1965: (Kennedy Galleries, New York, NY, probably sold to Alice Kaplan) By 1947 - by 1965: Howard Keyser III [1904-1980], Island Heights, NJ and Philadelphia, PA, consigned to the Kennedy Galleries 1
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1973. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 30-March 17, 1974). Heritage and Horizon: American Painting 1776 - 1976. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY (organizer) (March 7-April 11, 1976); The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI (May 2-June 13, 1976); The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH (July 4-August 15, 1976); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (September 8-October 10, 1976). The Magic of Still Life. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 4, 1986-February 1, 1987). Cleveland Collects American Art of the Gilded Age. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 23-May 18, 2003). The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- John F. Peto (American, 1854–1907)
- Date
- c.1895
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Framed: 95.9 x 83.2 x 4.4 cm (37 3/4 x 32 3/4 x 1 3/4 in.); Unframed: 76.2 x 63.5 cm (30 x 25 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- American Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Accession no.
- 1973.30
More by John Frederick Peto in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00009340
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