Even today the genre of still life is considered to be of lesser status and de Heem is one of many practitioners who disappears behind history painters or portraitists, because of the works he created. Yet he was a key painter of the Dutch Golden Age and gained valuable commissions beyond Utrecht, where he was born. According to Sam Segal, his portrait of William III of England, for instance, was sold for 2000 guilders which was among the highest price ever paid for a seventeenth century Dutch work of art. In this painting for royalty, de Heem combined the genres of portrait and still life to create an original, successful artwork steeped in symbolism and befitting of a monarchical representation. The works he produced later in life from the 1650s onward then extended his reputation, where he depicted a variety of flora, fauna, fruits and utensils against minimalist backgrounds to reflect the market trends of his day.
Broadly speaking, de Heem’s works can be divided into two categories. Firstly, his Pronkstilleven are most well-known and what truly fed the market. Meaning ‘ostentatious’ or ‘show off’, these were sumptuous still lifes with an array of objects depicted. So many Dutch artists were producing these works in the seventeenth century, from Willem Claeszoon Heda to Maria Sibylla Merian. Not only imbued with broader social and political themes to convey the magnitude of the Dutch Golden Age and highlight the growth of trade and the economy, the Pronkstilleven appealed to the individual viewer on a personal level. As Miya Tokumitsu describes, they were ‘mesmerising fantasies of affluence’ and encouraged a viewer to strive for wealth and achievement. However, when looking at the work in question, Still Life with Books and a Violin, de Heem does not convey richness or decadence. Instead, quite the opposite notions are suggested in this second category of artworks, conveying human frailty and mortality. This was not just an early preoccupation for de Heem, but throughout his life he returned to these darker subjects, including his Still life with Books, a Globe, a Skull, a Violin and a Fan in 1650.
With its overwhelmingly brown palette and shaft of light providing a brief hint of illumination, this still life is unusual. There are no sudden punches of colour, no bright tulips or sumptuous roses, no curious insects and therefore no signs of life. Perhaps the books and violin that make up the painting may have been used frequently in some distant past, but now lie discarded in front of the viewer, bending, cracking and curling up as time presses on. The shaft of lighting looks ominous and tomb-like, a gap gradually diminishing like a pair of eyes slowly closing up. There are no sounds, no music that comes from the neglected violin which is turned away from the viewer, so that even if it was played, its sound would ricochet off a bare wall to create further dissonance. Most of the books are closed up on the bare table, producing a barrier between the viewer and the written word, and by extension the painted scene. The piece of paper that drops slowly off the table is the only moment of movement, precariously balancing on the edge, again in a reference to the momentary and fleeting nature of human life. Most importantly, this piece of paper contains the only readable word in the canvas, epitomising the whole scene: finis.
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