Skip to main content

Jan Davidsz de Heem, 'Still Life with Books and a Violin', 1628

 


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. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mark Rothko, 'Light Red over Black', 1957

  My eye is not drawn to the painting itself but the title of the painting, 'Light Red Over Black'. We would automatically think that the black is on top of a red background, but Rothko has flipped this around, subverting the title just like he subverting the meaning of what it was to be an artist and what Art actually was. During this time, art was going through rapid changes, with abstract expressionism coming into full force (Rothko, Pollock). But Rothko showed that all this change was for the good, even if for him, it was short lived.  The colour red in this painting is searing and the black struggles to fully cover this velvety border, especially at the bottom of the canvas. Unlike the black squares which have a hazy quality to their edges, the red is clear and impregnable. It is hard to figure out what this represents - the Tate has suggested a window perhaps, but if it is a window then what are we looking out into? Perhaps it is night, or perhaps the viewer is catching ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Egon Schiele, 'Dead Mother', 1910

  My eye is drawn to the hand. Those long, bony fingers are so characteristic of Schiele but here they are particularly skeletal and deathly – the veins seem to have been injected with poison. And they are a warning right in the foreground of the painting that keeps the viewer at bay as an outsider to this incredibly intimate relationship between mother and child, and sets the tone of death and mortality which hangs over the whole image. The mother cradles her child in a womb-like shroud, alluding to childbirth and the death of the mother explained in the title. She seems desperate to feel that bodily connection with her child, highlighted by the emphasis on her craned neck as she tries to connect to the baby. There is a clear link between the mother’s bent neck and the child’s bent neck, again emphasising their longing to be with each other. However, the darkness around the child is almost like ropes, with flecks of white in the painting making it look as though the darkness is wo...
Post a Comment
Read more

M.K. Ciurlionis, 'Funeral Symphony VII', 1903

  There are many who have been left out of the art historical canon and Lithuanian artist and composer Mikalojus Ciurlionis is one of them. Producing over 200 musical works and 300 paintings, his career was extensive, prolific and multifaceted. Yet, he was a 'genius cursed by fate' according to artist and critic Alexandre Benois, dying from exhaustion in 1911. Praised within his lifetime, Ciurlionis is virtually invisible today, especially to a Western viewer. Describing one artwork by Ciurlionis is not enough to appreciate his diversity and synthesis of artforms - pastels, as this work shows, vignettes, oils, designs for stained glass, even abandoning the easel for cardboard. More importantly, he was indebted to the Lithuanian landscape. Ichiro Kato refers to him as 'Lithuanian in nature and national feeling...a genius from the Baltic lands', reflected in works including  Serenity depicting idyllic, peaceful settings of mountains and lakes, devoid of humanity. Like man...
Post a Comment
Read more