Still Life with Peaches and Grapes

This undated Still Life with Peaches and Grapes by Willem van Aelst is held in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, which assembled an important collection of Dutch and Flemish Baroque painting during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through Swedish royal acquisitions and the spoils of the Thirty Years' War. Fruit still lifes of this type occupied a distinct position within Dutch still life production: less morally charged than the vanitas compositions with skulls and hourglasses, they celebrated instead the sensory pleasures of sight, smell, and taste. Peaches, with their velvety skin and warm blush of colour, were among the most technically demanding fruits to paint convincingly, and Van Aelst returned to them frequently throughout his career. Grapes required a different set of skills — the translucency of individual berries, the bloom on their surface, the shadow cast by one berry onto another — making a peach-and-grape combination a virtual test of a still life painter's full range.

The bloom on grapes is rendered by applying a thin, slightly opaque layer over the dried transparent base colour, softening the surface while preserving the sense of the sphere beneath. Peach skin is built up through multiple warm glazes — from a pale base through apricot to deep rose and burgundy — with the final texture suggested by a dry-brush technique that catches the high points of the panel or canvas. Highlights on both fruits are applied last as small, pure white or pale yellow touches.