Still life with a lobster

This undated still life with a lobster in the National Museum in Warsaw represents de Heem's engagement with the most dramatically colorful of his animal subjects — the boiled lobster, whose vivid vermillion against the muted tones of fruit, metal, and linen creates an immediate compositional focus. The lobster appears in Dutch and Flemish still life as both luxury food item (lobsters were expensive in the seventeenth century and served at elite tables) and visual anchor, its warm red creating chromatic drama unavailable in fruit or metal alone. Warsaw's National Museum holds significant holdings of Dutch and Flemish painting acquired through various historical routes, including the complex redistributions of artworks following World War II. The undated nature of this work makes precise positioning within de Heem's career difficult, though stylistic analysis would allow approximate dating.

The lobster's shell is technically demanding: its boiled red is not a simple flat color but a complex surface of overlapping segments, each catching light differently, with highlights on the raised portions and shadow in the recesses between segments. De Heem renders this through layered strokes that follow the shell's structural logic, using pure vermillion in the lights and deeper crimson mixed with brown in the shadows.