Artwork
Still life with pewter jug
Still life with pewter jug is an oil painting by the Dutch Golden Age artist Jan Jansz den Uyl. It dates from 1635 and is held in the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. Jan Jansz.
About this work
Subject & Meaning
The painting presents a modest still life grouping featuring a pewter jug, lemon, tazza, watch, napkin, and knife arranged on a tabletop surface.
The painting presents a modest still life grouping featuring a pewter jug, lemon, tazza, watch, napkin, and knife arranged on a tabletop surface. These objects carry symbolic associations within Dutch Golden Age still life tradition: the jug and tazza may reference domestic drinkware, the watch suggests the passage of time, and the lemon conveys transience or luxury. The inclusion of a ticking watch alongside perishable items like fruit and foodstuffs reinforces themes of mortality and the fleeting nature of earthly pleasures, a common motif in 17th century vanitas imagery.
The composition balances textural contrasts, glossy metal, translucent fruit skin, and fabric folds, while maintaining a restrained palette that emphasizes material realism over overt allegory.
Technique & Style
The work is an oil painting executed on wooden panel in 1635. It depicts a pewter jug alongside a lemon, tazza, watch, napkin and knife, rendered with careful attention to surface texture and light. The composition balances still life elements through precise handling of objects and subtle chiaroscuro, reflecting the formal conventions of Dutch still life painting.
History & Provenance
Jan Jansz den Uyl painted Still life with pewter jug in 1635 as an oil painting on panel. The work entered the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, where it remains on view.
The painting is cataloged in the museum's holdings and documented in the artwork's provenance record.
Its dimensions of 63.2 cm by 48 cm are recorded in the museum's collection database.
The painting Still life with pewter jug by Jan Jansz. den Uyl is held in the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. The work was created in 1635 and executed in oil on panel. While the provided sources confirm its presence in the Antwerp museum, they do not list a specific inventory or accession number, nor do they detail any exhibition history for the piece.
Overview
Jan Jansz. den Uyl, an Utrecht‑based painter of the Dutch Golden Age, completed the oil painting Still life with pewter jug in 1635. The composition presents a modest arrangement of domestic objects, a pewter jug, a knife, a lemon, a napkin, a glass tazza with a metal lid, and a coiled rope, set on a green tabletop. The work belongs to the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp.
Context
Den Uyl specialized in breakfast and banquet still lifes, a genre that flourished in the Netherlands as a visual expression of prosperity and domestic virtue. The inclusion of a lemon, a symbol of acidity and freshness, alongside the pewter jug aligns the work with contemporary moralizing themes that linked material abundance to temperance and the fleeting nature of pleasure.
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Artist & collection
Artist
Jan Jansz. den Uyl (Utrecht (?), 1595/96 – 24 November 1639) was a painter of the Dutch Golden Age. He very much specialized in the form of still life known as the breakfast piece, or, in the elaborate style of painters…
