Still-Life

1625 · Private collection

still-life

This painting, one of the few youthful works by the artist, depicts a still-life with a Roemer, a roll, smoked herring, a watch, smoker's requisites, hazelnuts and a brazier. This intimate, small-format picture belongs to a group of the artist's paintings from the mid-1620s, in which Claesz. focused on combining two types of still-life, the breakfast piece and the so-called Toebackje or smoking still-life.

About the Artist

Pieter Claesz.

1597 – 1661

Dutch still-life painter, born in Germany and active in Haarlem where he settled in 1617. He and Willem Claeasz. Heda, who also worked in Haarlem, were the most important exponents of the "ontbijt" or breakfast piece. They painted with subdued, virtually monochromatic palettes, the subtle handling of light and texture being the prime means of expression. Claesz. generally chose objects of a more homely kind than Heda, although his later work became more colourful and decorative. The two men founded a distinguished tradition of still-life painting in Haarlem, but Claesz.'s son, Nicholas Berchem became famous as a landscape painter.

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