William Harnett was born in Ireland but shortly thereafter, his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Philadelphia. In 1865, at the age of 17, Harnett began an apprenticeship to a silver engraver, and gained the training that would later contribute to the technical precision of his painting style. During the 1860s, Harnett studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and continued his academic training after moving to New York in 1871, attending classes at the National Academy of Design and the Cooper Union. The year 1876, however, upon Harnett's return to Philadelphia as well as to the Pennsylvania Academy, marked his transition from artisan to artist and he devoted the rest of his life exclusively to painting.

Harnett presented objects from contemporary experience that had been subjected to use and wear, thereby linking the past to the present. In Still Life on a Table Top, 1878, this simultaneous reference is achieved by the juxtaposition of the worn objects tinted with age and the immediacy of the lit cigar and half-eaten biscuit. 1878, the year of the present work, represented the brink of the industrial era, combining great change with unprecedented speed and a generation was left yearning for their simple past. The delicate balance between the old and the new struck by Still Life on a Table Top echoes the sentiment of the age and is infused with subtle social commentary.