Eyefooler

After being beaten black & white by straight photography, realistic painting has come back in exquisite disarray in the works of Surrealists Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, et al. The vogue for their delicately painted dream pictures has caused a slighter vogue for "trompe l'ceil" (fool the eye) paintings, a form of virtuosity in every age since the birds came to peck at Apelles' painted grapes. Eyefoolers were, in fact, a popular specialty in the U. S. 60 years ago. Last week in Detroit an interesting U. S. Eyefooler of that period made news when it was snapped up by the U. S. Government.

Changes of Time, finished in 1888, was one of several remarkable still-lifes painted by the late Connecticut artist, John Haeberle. Others were named Chicago Bills and Grandma's Hearth. No description of Chicago Bills survives, but Grandma's Hearth, the records say, was so real that visitors tried to flick the painted flies off it. Painter Haeberle got a name as a worthy successor to Connecticut's great Eyefooling painter, William Harnett (1848-92).

Painter Haeberle's two masterpieces, Changes of Time and Grandma's Hearth, were bought by Detroiters at the Detroit Exposition of 1889. After a few years, both ended up in the gentlemen's art gallery of Churchill's Saloon on Woodward Avenue. Changes of Time outlasted Churchill's as a cherished possession of Distiller Marvin Preston. It got its poignancy from the fact that it displayed, in minute detail, almost every form of U. S. currency from 1776 to 1886. Old Mr. Preston would never let it go, even when the late John F. Dodge, one of the original Dodge Brothers, offered him $26,000 for it. The story is that Mr. Dodge used to "stand for hours" looking at it in Churchill's.

When Mr. Preston died in 1924, the painting passed to his nephew Charles, and when Charles died in 1928, to son Marvin III. Recently Marvin III, 26, took it to the Detroit Institute of Arts to arrange for its exhibition. Director Wilhelm Valentiner, dazzled by the reality of Artist Haeberle's currency, particularly a life-size 1886 five-dollar bill, advised consultation with Federal authorities. Assistant Deputy William A. Carlson of the Secret Service took one long look at Changes of Time, confiscated it under Sections 175 and 177 of the Federal Criminal Code (passed in 1909) which make it unlawful to design, engrave, print or in any manner make or execute anything in the likeness of any obligation of the U. S.

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