Research & Reflection
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Research point 2- 17th century Dutch still life & flower painters & subsequent developments to the present day ! !Project: Still Life! The Dutch Golden Age of painting coincided with a period of stability and wealth in the newly! independent Dutch Republic. The development of still life as a subject for painting arose! through a shift away from classical and religious subject matter to genres more suitable for the! homes of the newly wealthy merchant classes. One of these genres was the still life. Towards! the end of the 17th century, an interest in secular, domestic subjects made household objects,! bowls of fruit, musical instruments, fabrics, dead game animals and birds, bottles and glass! !bowls the subjects of the highest level of scrutiny and analysis.! These paintings weren’t just technical exercises. The objects in a picture frequently had an! underlying significance, perhaps relating to the role or status of the person who commissioned! the work. (The description and interpretation of the content of images is called iconography.)! Sometimes these paintings were meditations on mortality with the presence of a skull or other! !motifs representing death. Paintings of this sort are often known as ‘vanitas’ paintings.! The Dutch masters used still life as a way to explore the technical and artistic possibilities of! applying paint. Their hyper-real works are a celebration of the beauty of the external world.! They pushed painting to new boundaries in their rendering of light on and through glass, in! !exploring colour, texture and tonal arrangements.! Research point Look at the work of some of the 17th century Dutch still life and flower! painters. Make notes on paintings that you especially admire and find out more about the! techniques that were employed at that time. Research at least one painting that has! iconographic significance. Which of the objects depicted carry particular meaning and! !what was that meaning?! Then explore the development of still life through the eighteenth, nineteenth and! twentieth centuries. For example, look at how traditional still life subjects were dealt with! in some early Cubist paintings by Braque and Picasso. Investigate how some! !contemporary artists are interpreting this genre.! Academies for painting were established across Europe during the 18th century although they first arose in Italy in the 16th century. They replaced and supplemented the medieval painters' guilds. The single most influential academy, the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, was !founded in 1648. [source: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/academy ]! Throughout the 'Academy' system of learning painting skills an official list existed which! !detailed which paintings were more important than others - "The hierarchy of genres".! The term 'Academic Art' refers to painting and sculpture produced under the influence of the! various Academies in Europe (especially in France - 19th century) where many artists received! !their formal training. [source: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/academic-art.html ]! !The hierarchy is as follows:! • History painting (classical, mythological, literary and religious subjects and events)! • Portriature (portrait painting)! • Genre painting (scenes from everyday life - containing people, animals, still life objects,! bits of landscape, although interior scenes were more common)! • Landscape painting (wide-open vistas, but also included cityscapes, seascapes,! waterscapes) - anything found in physical geography! • Animal painting (such as horse paintings)! !• Still Life painting (containing no living objects! [source: " !http://arthistory.about.com/od/academic-art-academies/tp/The-Hierarchy-of-Genres-in-Academic-Art.htm ]! With particular regard to genre painting, the Phaidon Press (1994) The art book. London: Phaidon Press, p504 states that it is: 'Painting that depicts scenes of everyday life rather than idealised or religious subjects [as with history painting for example]. Genre painting was particularly popular in Holland in the 17th century, and artists often specialised in subjects such as tavern scenes (see Jan Steen), musical parties or simple interiors (see Jan Vermeer). The style became more prevalent elsewhere in the 18th century with the work of Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin in France, !Pietro Longhi in Italy and William Hogarth in England.'! It is interesting to note that in genre painting there were often compositions of every day items laid out in still life form. For example, Johannes Vermeer’s ‘The Milkmaid’ (1658-1660) shows a table laid out with jugs, bread basket and pieces of bread as part of the overall composition of the every day life of the milkmaid:! ! [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Golden_Age_painting ]! However, what marked still life as different in western art was the fact that the subject matter of the painting or sculpture dealt with was inanimate - ‘anything that does not move or is dead’ - such as man-made objects like jugs, natural objects, flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish, game, wine and the like. [source: Tate Museum Glossary:" !http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120203094030/http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=286 ! Still life painting flourished during the 17th century Golden Age of the Dutch Republic and is generally recognised as beginning with the Flemish-born flower painter Ambrosius Bosschaert (1573 - 1621). These painting were usually fairly brightly lit showing bouquets of simply arranged !flowers:! ! ! ! ! Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621) Roses, tulips, anemone, cyclamen and other flowers !in a porcelain vase [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosius_Bosschaert ].! From the mid-17th century still life arrangements became more ‘chiaroscuro’ or baroque in style painted on dark grounds. The Delft-born artist Willem van Aelst (1627 - 1683) represents this approach as can be seen in ‘Still life with a watch’, c1665, with a typical dark background:! ! [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Willem_van_Aelst_-_Bloementuil.jpg ]! There were a variety of themes explored throughout this period of still life painting, including !‘vanitas’, and ‘ostentatious’ or ‘pronkstilleven’.! ‘Vanitas’ still life paintings were concerned with imparting some form of moralistic message, often about the brevity of life and often included clear symbols such as broken eggs, half-peeled fruit and !even in some instances, a skull. ! The Belgian-born artist Pieter Claesz’s works ‘Vanitas’ of 1625 (below left) and 1630 (below right) are good examples of this style of still life painting, showing skills of handling the details of texture and surfaces as well as realistic light effects:! [sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Claesz " ! and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Golden_Age_painting ]! Skull and bones, the dying of the light, deterioration of flowers, fruit and even parchment, and the !vanity of the mirrored glass and maybe even a ‘key’ to what comes after?! The Hague-born artist Abraham Van Bereyen’s ‘Banquet Still Life’ of 1660 is an example of the ‘ostentatious’ or ‘pronkstilleven’ still life format, showing a wide range of objects which would seem to be beyond the reach of the majority of the populace such as expensive goblets, intricately patterned table cloth or tapestry, exotic fruit, oysters and lobster! - maybe more directed towards the Dutch middle class. And, what does the wee mouse on the silver platter above the knife signify? - wow, what a feast:! ! [source: http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/b/beyeren/index.html ]! The Haarlem-born artist Willem Claeszoon Heda’s still life paintings often depicted reflective surfaces, as can be seen in his ‘Breakfast Table with Blackberry Pie’, 1631:! ! [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Golden_Age_painting ]! The Utrecht-born artist Jacob Gillig was well known for his still life paintings of dead fish, as can be seen here in his work ‘Freshwater Fish’, 1684, with its evocative composition of river detritus, fishing nets, cork floats and (of course) caught fish:! ! [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Gillig ]! The Brussels-born portrait painter Philippe de Champaigne painted a very clear ‘vanitas’ style still life in 1671 entitled ‘Still-Life with a Skull’ showing the classic tryptic images of all of our essential histories - life, death and time - which, in essence, sums up the fundamental underlying themes of !still life painting throughout the ages:! ! ! [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StillLifeWithASkull.jpg! ]! In the 18th century, Jean Siméon Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Oudry are among the many !eighteenth-century heirs to the Dutch tradition of still life painting.! ![source: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nstl/hd_nstl.htm ]! Born in Paris, Jean Siméon Chardin was greatly influenced by the domestic genre of 17th century Dutch art, and as well as genre scenes he is considered a master of still life, expressing ‘the life of inanimate objects’ [source: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/jean-simeon-chardin ]. ! [Jean-Siméon Chardin, Still Life with Glass Flask and Fruit, oil on canvas, c 1728. image source: ! ! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Baptiste_Siméon_Chardin_029.jpg ].! ! In ‘Still life with glass flask and fruit’, the reflected light on the glass flask and silver help to illustrate Chardin’s own statement on painting, “Who said one paints with colours? One employs colours, !but one paints with feeling.”! The French artist Jean-Baptiste Oudry is renowned mainly