Still-Life with a Nautilus Cup

still-life

One of the most characteristic types of painting in Holland in the seventeenth century was still-life which was brought to a higher level of refinement there than anywhere else in Europe. Some still-lifes have symbolic meanings - the vanity of earthly wealth - but others, including those of the greatest practitioner of this genre, Willem Kalf, seem to be simply pronkstilleven, lavish displays of ceramics, glassware, gold and silver vessels as well as exotic food. They reflect a new willingness of rich Dutchmen to parade their possessions, an attitude which would have been frowned upon by an earlier, more puritanical generation.

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About the Artist

Willem Kalf

1619 – 1693

Dutch painter, one of the most celebrated of all sill-life painters. In 1642-46 he worked in Paris. On his return to the Netherlands he lived in Hoorn and then in 1653 settled in Amsterdam. His early works were modest kitchen and courtyard scenes, but he soon became the outstanding exponent of a type of still-life in which fruit and precious objects - porcelain, oriental rugs, Venetian glass - are arranged in grand Baroque displays. His pictures have often been compared with those of Vermeer because of his masterly handling of texture and his ability to manipulate warm and cool colours (he frequently contrasts the reddish browns in a carpet with the yellow of a peeled lemon and the blue and white of porcelain).

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