1663
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Silver Wine Jug, Ham, and Fruit is a 1663 unspecified by Abraham van Beijeren, a Baroque work, depicting Food, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a silver wine jug, a half-eaten ham, grapes, and a peeled lemon on a dark table. Up close, the brushstrokes look messy—almost like blobs of paint. But step back, and the jug glows with light, its reflections sharp enough to show the artist at work. Van Beyeren painted these still lifes to hang high, so the details snap into place only when you move away. If you like how light plays on metal, look up *impasto*—the thick, textured paint that makes this jug shine.
With their typically large scale, and loose and energetic brushwork, Abraham van Beyeren’s opulent still life paintings were designed to be seen from a slight distance—perhaps installed over a mantelpiece. Here, for example, the silver wine jug is painted with rough strokes that seem almost abstract when viewed up close, but from a distance it becomes a fully realized object shimmering with complex reflections—including a ghostly self-portrait of the artist at his easel.
Look closely: the shimmering surface of the silver wine jug reflects a portrait of the artist at his easel.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Abraham Hendriksz van Beijeren or Abraham van Beyeren (c. 1620, The Hague – March 1690, Overschie (Rotterdam)) was a Dutch Baroque painter of still lifes. Little recognized in his day and initially active as a marine…
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