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Still Life
Pieter Claesz·c. 1625
Historical Context
Pieter Claesz was one of the foremost still life painters of the Haarlem school, specializing in the monochrome "breakfast piece" or ontbijtje that defined Dutch still life painting in the 1620s-1640s. This work of about 1625 shows his characteristic arrangement of humble objects—bread, glass, knife—on a bare table, conveying a Calvinist message about the transience of earthly pleasures. Claesz and his rival Willem Claesz Heda virtually invented the tonal still life.
Technical Analysis
Claesz employs a restricted palette of browns, grays, and ochres to create a unified tonal harmony, with masterful rendering of light reflecting off glass and metal surfaces. The oil-on-panel technique achieves remarkable textural differentiation between bread crust, gleaming pewter, and transparent glassware.
Provenance
Probably Cassirer, Amsterdam [the mounts of photos in both the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague, and the Witt Library, London, are marked Cassirer, Amsterdam, 1939, though the picture was at the Art Institute from late 1935; the Witt photo is also annotated “Worcester, Mass.”; see also Vroom 1945 and Bergstrom 1956]. M. Knoedler & Co., New York by 1935 [receipt dated September 9, 1935 in Registrar’s office; the number A 1559 printed on a label on the back may be the Knoedler’s stock number]; sold to the Art Institute, 1935.
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