Still Life with Currency

Born in Germany and raised in Ohio, Charles Alfred Meurer began painting hyperrealistic, or trompe l’oeil, compositions like Still Life with Currency after seeing examples of the illusionistic genre by fellow American artist William Michael Harnett in the 1880s. Meurer exactingly rendered a set of metal, wax, and paper objects against a wooden panel, complete with graining, gouges, and a prominent splinter that secures a newspaper fragment. Legible in the clipping is the phrase “Counterfeiters Caught,” a humorous comment on the artist’s own skills of verisimilitude.