Jefferson David Chalfant

Chalfant was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, but moved in young adulthood to Wilmington, Delaware, where he would spend the rest of his life. Employed by a commercial firm as a painter of parlor car interiors, he began his activity as a fine artist in the early 1880s. Although he had no formal training, he quickly developed a fine technique. His early works are mostly still-life and landscape paintings, which sold well to private collectors.[http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1701507?rskey=agMxLD&result=2 American Dictionary Online]

Chalfant exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design, and elsewhere. In 1890, he was able to travel to Paris for two years, where he studied figure painting under Adolphe-William Bouguereau and Jules Joseph Lefebvre. This served him well during a career in which he painted genre, portraits and other subjects. His signal achievement may be his still lifes.[http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00035038?rskey=agMxLD&result=3 Benezit Dictionary of Artists]

File:Smiling boy, by Jefferson David Chalfant.jpg

File:The Visiting Champion by Jefferson David Chalfant.jpg

His still lifes are painted in the illusionistic trompe-l'œil (literally, "fool the eye") manner popularized in the late nineteenth century by William Michael Harnett. Harnett inspired many followers, the best known being John F. Peto, but few, if any, had Chalfant's technical finesse. Often, Chalfant's compositions closely follow prototypes by Harnett, but Chalfant usually simplifies, eliminating secondary objects and details.Frankenstein 1970, p. 148. An example is his Violin and Bow (1889) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET).{{Cite web |last=Chalfant |first=Jefferson D. |title=Violin and Bow |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10430 |access-date=2022-11-27 |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art}}

Although he was only slightly younger than Harnett and Peto, he outlived both of them by many years, and continued painting until 1927, when he had a stroke. He died in Wilmington in 1931.

File:The Connoisseur MET ap1978.138.jpg

A 2022 exhibition at the MET{{Cite web |title=Cubism and the Trompe l'Oeil Tradition |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2022/cubism-trompe-loeil/exhibition-objects |access-date=2022-11-27 |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art}} draws comparisons between the work of Chalfant, Harnet (as well as European trompe-l'œil painters such as Samuel van Hoogstraten, Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts, Jean Etienne Liotard, and Luis Meléndez) and the work of Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Pablo Picasso.{{Cite web |last=James |first=Caryn |title=Trompe l'oeil and the images that fool the mind |url=https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20221116-trompe-loeil-and-the-paintings-that-deceive-our-eye |access-date=2022-11-27 |website=www.bbc.com |language=en}} One example is Chalafant's Which is Which, a highly realistic oil painting of a postage stamp with collage elements including an actual postage stamp and a fictitious printed newspaper clipping, hints at Cubism as well as foreshadowing the use of "faux collage" and fake news.{{Cite web |last=Chalfant |first=Jefferson D. |date= |title=Which is Which? |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/788348?&exhibitionId=0&oid=788348&pkgids=793 |access-date=2022-11-29 |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art}}{{Cite web |last=Chalfant |first=Jefferson D. |title=Brandywine Works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art |url=https://www.brandywine.org/museum/blog/brandywine-works-philadelphia-museum-art |access-date=2022-11-29 |website=The Brandywine Museum of Art}}

• Frankenstein, Alfred (1970). The Reality of Appearance. Greenwich: New York Graphic Society. {{ISBN|0-8212-0357-6}}
• Wilmerding, John (1983). Important Information Inside. New York: Harper & Row. {{ISBN|0-06-438941-3}}

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• [http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324coll10/id/34677/rec/42 American paintings & historical prints from the Middendorf collection], an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Chalfant (no. 48–49)
• [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search?q=Jefferson+D.+Chalfant&sortBy=Relevance&pageSize=0&searchField=ArtistCulture Jefferson D. Chalfant holdings], The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Category:1856 births

Category:1931 deaths

Category:19th-century American painters

Category:20th-century American painters

Category:Académie Julian alumni

Category:American male painters

Category:American still life painters

Category:Trompe-l'œil artists

Category:Artists from Wilmington, Delaware

Category:Painters from Delaware

Category:Painters from Pennsylvania

Category:People from Chester County, Pennsylvania

Category:19th-century American male artists

Category:20th-century American male artists