John Haberle (1856-1933)
The Clay Pipe, c. 1890
Oil on canvas, 18 x 8 3/4”
Signed lower right

How would you interpret this painting? A pipe from the Colonial era, known as a churchwarden, hangs with a sack of what has been identified as "Duke’s Mixture," a popular tobacco in the 1880s and 1890s, so inexpensive that some said it was made of the factory’s floor sweepings. ("Duke’s mixture" entered American English as a term for any odd mix or confused situation.)

Haberle usually alluded to contemporary issues in witty or ironic ways. Did he do that here? His day job was at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the close work he did there and on paintings like this ended his trompe l’oeil period by the late 1890s.