For Sunday's Dinner

For Sunday's Dinner — William Michael Harnett. 1888.

Medium: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 94.3 × 53.6 cm (37 1/8 × 21 1/8 in.).

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

Still-life painter William Michael Harnett excelled at trompe l’oeil, painting that fools the eye, through realistic depiction. In For Sunday’s Dinner , a chicken hangs in front of a painted door with its throat cut and most of its feathers plucked; a few remaining downy spots stand out against the puckered, pimpled flesh. The metal door hinges, on the right side of the canvas, frame the chicken and echo its form. The painting’s title and the rough, blemished surface of the door suggest a country dinner, the homey meal evoking nostalgia for a simpler past.

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.