Still life and Flowers - 17th Century Dutch painting and 18th, 19th and 20th century Still Life.

Well before the Dutch, Still Life paintings appeared in antiquity, as in this 1500 BC Egyptian funerary painting discovered in the Tomb of Menna, which had walls adorned with scenes of everyday life.

And also in this beautiful 1st century AD fresco from Pompei of a bowl of fruit

Source: https://mymodernmet.com/what-is-still-life-painting-definition/

These do however appear to have been mainly for decoration, and possibly also intended to record daily life of the time. Whatever the intention, they are certainly a very useful record to help us understand their lives.

16th and 17th Century Dutch Still Life

Still Life as an independent genre really began in the renaissance period, following the reformation, with the rise of a wealthy middle class and a new market for secular subjects to decorate homes, as opposed to religious art and portraiture. Although there were early German, French, Italian and Spanish artists producing Still Life paintings, the Dutch of the early 1600s in particular excelled in the genre.

At the time, realistic Still Life paintings portraying objects from everyday life were extremely popular, despite the low prestige of the genre amongst art critics. Still Life was on the bottom rank in the genres of art, with historical and religious paintings and portraits at the high end of the market.

It was thought that these other genres were more challenging, that because a painting of a battle required an intimate knowledge of human anatomy and expression, artists who painted such scenes therefore had more skill than Still Life painters. And also that historical paintings were more interesting to look at than paintings of collections of inanimate artefacts.

It seems to me that these opinions challenged the Dutch Still Life painters to find ways to fight back, and led to a movement that produced not only magnificent realism and highly decorative paintings, but also, just like historical scenes, paintings full of symbolism and message; skulls, dead animals, candles, sandglasses and other objects as allegories of mortality, combined with flowers and fruits which represented the natural cycle. A fine example being Harmen Steenwyck’s Allegory of the Vanities of Human Lifeabout 1640

The symbolism in this painting is:

Examples of fabulous Dutch flower painting are Ambrosius Bosschaert’s, Basket of flowers(1614)

And Roeland Savery’s Flowers in a Vase with Insects and Shells(1603)

Both of these are highly realistic and full of detail, and in the Savery painting we see lizards, butterflies and insects, implying the transient nature of the subjects, painted with a full background giving a sense of depth, place and space.

During my research I found some very interesting videos of lectures from Yale University, a journal article about realism and symbolism in 17th century Dutch painting, and many other sources, which conclude that not only were there differences in how each painter approached his work, the approach each one took also changed with age and experience.

In Rembrandt’s case for example, studies of his early work show that his brush strokes were more refined and more detailed than in his later work, which had broader brush strokes with less attempt at blending. The colours still blended to the eye and the brain however, showing his understanding of the theory of colour as described centuries later by Chevreul.

Some of these early Dutch artists started with a drawing outlining the subject, before proceeding with the underpainting, and others began by under-painting with a dark colour, all of whom worked with very limited materials compared to modern artists. These artists had to prepare their own mediums from the limited selection of pigments available at the time, some of which were rare and expensive, and they learned to compensate for the limitations with complex techniques in under-painting, glazing and impasto, varying the consistency of the paint and the mode of application as necessary.

It’s also very interesting to realise that paintings of vases of mixed flowers could not have been painted from life, as not all of the flowers would have been available at the same time, given that they bloom at different times of the year. Studies have concluded that most such paintings would have been done based on pre-existing sketches, drawings or paintings, either by the artists themselves or copied from botanical studies.

Research into painters’ terminology indicates that for these early painters there were three or four main stages: inventing, which refers to the initial drawing and sketching, dead-colouring which today is called under-painting, and working-up and retouching which refer to the body painting and finishing.

This process can be seen in work done by the Yale University on The Goldfinch by Fabritius, 1654, oil on panel 33,5 x 22.8.

The first image reveals Fabritius’ process of blocking his composition, the dead colouring or under-painting in monochrome, with the colour applied later. This monochrome was normally Neutral Grey, Raw Umber sometimes mixed with black, and the second image shows the working up of the bird and his food box.

In the third picture we see his final work and can see that it has been retouched with the later addition of the step bar to complete the work. It’s said that the message of the painting is that the goldfinch has to work to get his food from the box just as humans have to work to support themselves

A style that appeared in the 17th century was the trompe l’oiel, which is a visual illusion in a painting to make the eye perceive the subject as a three-dimensional object by the use of light, shadows and perspective, a wonderful example being Letters by Wallerant Vaillant, Dutch 1623-1677. This is a very interesting painting, a very realistic depiction of folded notes held on a board by ribbons, their wrinkled corners appearing to come right out towards the viewer using light and shadow to create the effect.

Reference

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/dutch-painting-the-golden-age/content-section-4.1

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/technique/technique_underpainting.html#.XIA9zC10fok

Daedalus

Vol. 91, No. 3, Current Work and Controversies—2 (Summer, 1962), pp. 469-500 (32 pages)

Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences https://www.jstor.org/stable/20026724?read-now=1&seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents

Food for thought: Pieter Claesz and Dutch Still life. Yale university art gallery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivzN-9V9ps4

18th Century Still Life

This was a time of change and new political ideas which produced an imbalance in art genres. Still Life painting declining in popularity in favour of the written or spoken word, and philosophical prose, poetry, satire and criticism were preferred to painting. Towards the end of the century the function of Still Life painting was largely to illustrate the written word. Floral subjects were used mainly in porcelain and wallpaper, and the objective of the Still Life genre was largely realism rather than symbolism and profound messages.

Prominent painters of the time included Francois Desportes, French, 1661-1743, mostly known for his hunting scenes and opulent Still Life paintings. His Still Life with Silver (c. 1720), shows a variety of luxurious silver and porcelain objects and fruits, displayed carefully and quite symmetrically, which reminds me of a church altar - placed in the middle of a garden given that in the background you can see trees. This painting got my attention because, although the objects do not seem to have any particular iconography, it is somehow grotesque and a bit spooky - quite disturbing to look at.

Another painter from the period I admire very much is François Bovin, French, (1817-1887), whose Still Life with Asparagus,1881, is a very realistic painting in chiaroscuro style. It shows a bunch of asparagus, an old saucepan, a knife and a tea towel, arranged in a diagonal composition across the canvas, and the colours are quite muted. The impression given is that the asparagus is about to be cut, washed and dried, and then put in the saucepan to cook.

I really like this painting, a humble but very effective composition compared with the Desportes painting. The colours are muted but complement each other wonderfully, the reddish-brown of the asparagus ends, the white fabric and brown line of the tea towel, the handle of the knife, the metallic reflection in the saucepan, the green herbs on the left, and the dark background.

Reference

https://www.artistsnetwork.com/magazine/fooling-around-with-trompe-loeil/.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10993

Still-Life Paintings in a Consumer Society, R. G. Saisselin, Leonardo, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Summer, 1976), pp. 197-203, Published by: The MIT Press

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1573553?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3A8c70475d58fe0431ce7efa6c2f2f0863&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

19th Century Still Life

During this period artists came to the conclusion that painting should not try to illustrate thought in the same way as the written word, that painting should be a quite different form of expression, neither full of images and symbolism nor simply an accurate depiction of an object. The classical narrative element of Still Life ceased to be the primary consideration, the idea of realism and the need for accurate representation of objects fell away, and two major new artistic movements came to dominate the second half of the century: Impressionism and Post-impressionism.

The Impressionists were a group of painters who took up themes from modern life, executing primarily landscape and genre subjects, with broken colour and loose brushwork reflecting the transitory nature of the images they depicted. In response, the Post-Impressionists developed independent styles of painting which rejected the objective naturalism of the Impressionists. (In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000).

Paul Cezanne (French, 1839-1906) was an important artist of the 19th century who is considered to be the link between Impressionism and the Cubism of the next century. His Still Life with Water Jug, 1892-3 has a sense of being unfinished but shows how Cezanne used colour: the greens of the apples, the green and grey shadows on the wall, and the red and orange shadows on the white fabric. The small, repetitive brush strokes he used to build up his subjects show how much he studied his subjects from different views angles in order to produce his work.

20th century Still Life

One of the main movements of the 20th century was Cubism, based on Cezanne and the simultaneous multiple views invented by Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) and George Braque (French, 1882-1963). Cubism is described as the Fourth Dimension concept, the idea being to depict the world as it is, and not as it seems.

In Picasso’s Fruit Dishes we can clearly see the influence of Cezanne, with the use of perspective to show different angles, the tilted table and the fruits spread on the table. It is not however a realistic or impressionistic representation of nature, with its basic shapes, lines and sharp angles. I like this painting very much because it creates simple shapes in an unusual way, and yet despite the unusual perspective it nevertheless has depth.

More examples of Picasso and Braque's interesting artworks are -

Reference

https://www.thoughtco.com/cubism-art-history-183315

https://cndartstudio.wixsite.com/cecilia516830/single-post/2017/10/30/Research-into-Still-life-genre

Contemporary artists

Damian Hirst’s sculpture For the love of God, The Diamond Skull, 2007, is a magnificent work which to me shows the influence of 17th century Dutch vanitas paintings, with the diamonds as a reference of the futile luxuries of life, and the skull as a reminder of our own mortality - though I am not entirely sure this was the intention of the artist.

For the Love of God

2007 Platinum, diamonds and human teeth

Diamond Skulls

References

http://www.damienhirst.com/for-the-love-of-god

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWSb9QMlLoQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tXIYBFbUjs

Reference

Conclusion

I am trying to find a relationship between my Still Life research and my own practise, but find it quite difficult because I like portraiture very much and the challenge of depicting emotion and narrative in my subjects, of trying to work in a more organic and fresh manner but at the same time to find that almost imperceptible detail on the face or in the eyes of my subjects which makes a portrait come to life.

I very much admire the skill of Still Life painters but when I have to do a Still Life I find it very difficult to get excited. I don’t know what to look for, apart from a balanced and pleasing composition, and find it very difficult to make a Still Life into a really successful piece of work.

However it is interesting and useful to learn about ways of thinking and the techniques used by the old masters - how artists through the centuries have used techniques and the evolution of ideas in society in their time.