Haunted House

Haunted House — Morris Kantor. 1930.

Medium: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 94.3 × 84.5 cm (37 1/8 × 33 1/4 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

Morris Kantor drew inspiration from the material culture of historical New England—ladder-back chairs, colonial portraiture, marine painting, wallpaper—in this fantastical rendering of a supposedly haunted house in rural Massachusetts. A shadowy figure lurks at the composition’s darkened right edge, an unknown presence encroaching on the comforts of the sitting room. Kantor later recalled that such a setting, with “its peculiar moldy smell, the fading beauty of old plaster discolored by time and living . . . turned my imagination to the past, to the people who had lived there and gone.” A Russian immigrant, the artist engaged with the stories and objects of American history as catalysts for his Surrealist, dreamlike musings.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.