He and his wife took in seasonal boarders, he found work playing cornet at the town's camp revival meetings, and he supplemented his income by selling his paintings to tourists.

[citation needed] Both artists were masters of trompe-l'œil, a genre of still life that aims to deceive the viewer into mistaking painted objects for reality.

When the catalogs of the two artists were posthumously analyzed, it was determined that "many of [Peto's] canvases received forged signatures of William Harnett.

"[4][5] Peto's paintings, generally considered less technically skilled than Harnett's,[6] are more abstract, use more unusual color, and often have a stronger emotional resonance.

[7] The subject matter of Peto's paintings consisted of the most ordinary of things: pistols, horseshoes, bits of paper, keys, books, and the like.