1625
oil
panel
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Still Life is a 1625 oil by Pieter Claesz, a Baroque work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
You see a table with food and fancy dishes in this painting. The food and dishes are arranged in a way that looks like a meal is about to start. This type of painting was popular when the Dutch economy was doing well, and people wanted to show off their wealth. To learn more about this style, look up the technique of chiaroscuro.
Around 1600, as the Dutch economy boomed, large-scale still lifes depicting luxury goods emerged as a genre that appealed to a sophisticated clientele. Pieter Claesz. was a leading painter of a type of still life often described as a “banquet piece,” which featured sumptuous foods and opulent serving vessels, typically strewn across an elaborately dressed tabletop. These costly goods—like the lemon, olives, sweetmeats, and lace-edged damask tablecloth in this painting—were sometimes depicted in a state of decay to suggest the transitory nature of coveted earthly things. The well-preserved…
Probably Cassirer, Amsterdam [the mounts of photos in both the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague, and the Witt Library, London, are marked Cassirer, Amsterdam, 1939, though the picture was at the Art Institute from late 1935; the Witt photo is also annotated “Worcester, Mass.”; see also Vroom 1945 and Bergstrom 1956]. M. Knoedler & Co., New York by 1935 [receipt dated September 9, 1935 in Registrar’s office; the number A 1559 printed on a label on the back may be the Knoedler’s stock number]; sold to the Art Institute, 1935.
Worcester, Worcester Art Museum, "Condition; Excellent," March - April 1951, cat. 8.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Pieter Claesz was born in 1596 or 1597 in Berchem, near Antwerp, and moved to Haarlem in the Dutch Republic around 1620.
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