Artwork
Still Life with Flowers
Still Life with Flowers is an unspecified painting by the Dutch Golden Age artist Nicolaes Lachtropius. It dates from 1667 and is held in the collection of the Rijksmuseum.
About this work
History & Provenance
The painting is additionally listed in the Fitzwilliam Museum's collection as "Vase of Flowers," though this appears to be a different work by the same artist.
Still Life with Flowers is held in the Rijksmuseum collection in Amsterdam under inventory number SK-C-5.
The work was exhibited at the Rijksmuseum in the 19th century and has been part of the museum's permanent display since at least the early 20th century.
It was also featured in the 1985 exhibition "Dutch Flower Painting in the Seventeenth Century" at the Rijksmuseum.
The painting is additionally listed in the Fitzwilliam Museum's collection as "Vase of Flowers," though this appears to be a different work by the same artist.
Context
Nicolaes Lachtropius was a Dutch Golden Age painter active in the mid- to late seventeenth century, working primarily in Amsterdam, The Hague, and Leiden before being last registered in Alphen aan den Rijn. He specialized in still lifes, with particular emphasis on floral subjects, and is documented as a follower of Otto Marseus van Schrieck, whose style influenced his own. The painting Still Life with Flowers, dated 1667, sits within this body of work and exemplifies the floral still life genre for which Lachtropius is recorded.
His broader oeuvre includes a still life with flowers held by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and a flower vase at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, situating his production within major European collections of Dutch Golden Age painting. As a minor specialist in a field dominated by more celebrated contemporaries, Lachtropius occupies a place in art history as one of several painters who extended the tradition of detailed floral composition established by van Schrieck.
Overview
The work titled Still Life with Flowers presents a glass vase perched on a marble ledge, brimming with a mixed bouquet of roses and poppies. Interspersed among the blossoms are a few butterflies, while a snail traverses the marble surface below. The composition balances the delicate floral display with subtle signs of animal life.
Subject & Meaning
The painting juxtaposes cultivated beauty, roses and poppies, with fleeting creatures, suggesting a dialogue between the cultivated and the natural. The presence of butterflies and a snail introduces notions of transience and quiet persistence within an otherwise static arrangement.
Technique & Style
Rendered in oil on canvas, the artist employs a realistic approach to texture, capturing the sheen of glass, the softness of petals, and the glossy shell of the snail. Light falls across the marble ledge, creating gentle reflections that enhance the three‑dimensional illusion of the objects.
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