The Old Violin is one of Harnett's most famous paintings. The subject is deceptively simple; a violin, a sheet of music, a small newspaper clipping, and a blue envelope are shown against a background formed by a green wooden door.

   The painting is also a work of multi–layered meanings involving the relationships between illusion and reality, between old and new, and between the momentary and the enduring. At the heart of such meanings is the transience of time, which the artist illustrated by showing signs of wear and age throughout the painting. Even the songs, one from Bellini's La Sonnambula, and the other the popular song "Helas, Quelle Douleur", are concerned with temporal change. But it is the violin itself, now mute, but worn with use and still dusted with rosin, that speaks most evocatively of past pleasures.

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   William Harnett (1848-1892) was an Irish-American painter of the nineteenth century, whose fame may not have withstood the passage of time very well but who nonetheless was responsible for some excellent work in the trompe l’œil still life genre. Trompe l’œil, meaning “deceive the eye” in French, is a style of painting that seeks to create a highly realistic, three-dimensional depiction of objects, using perspectival illusionism.

   The Old Violin is one of Harnett’s most famous paintings and a superb example of painted realism. The subject is deceptively simple; a violin, rendered in actual size, a sheet of music, a small newspaper clipping, and a blue envelope are shown against a background formed by a green and rusty-hinged wooden door. It created a sensation when first exhibited at the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition in 1886, where viewers were enthralled by the technical virtuosity of the picture. A local newspaper reported that “a policeman stands by it constantly, lest people reach over and attempt to see if the newspaper clipping is genuine by tearing it off”.

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