The American painter William Michael Harnett (1848-1892) was his era's leading trompe l'oeil still-life painter.

William Harnett was born on Aug. 10, 1848, in County Cork, Ireland, and taken to Philadelphia by his parents when he was a child. Harnett learned the engraver's trade and found employment as a silver engraver. When he was 19, he attended night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Two years later he moved to New York, where he worked for jewelry firms during the day and studied painting at the National Academy of Design and the Cooper Union at night.

A still-life painter from the start, Harnett was not tormented by dreams of artistic grandeur. In an age when many portrait painters wished to paint historical subjects, he was happy to paint his cabbage and, according to legend, eat it too. His first picture of a pipe and a beer mug not only...