Still Life with Poultry

Painted in 1658 and held in the Rijksmuseum, this Still Life with Poultry belongs to the period just after Willem van Aelst returned from his formative years in Italy and France. Back in Amsterdam by 1657, he was immediately recognised as a painter of unusual skill in the depiction of dead game and elaborate flower arrangements. Poultry — chicken, duck, and other farmyard birds — represented a slightly less aristocratic register of game still life compared to partridge or heron, but they were no less demanding technically: the contrast between the soft, dense feathers of a chicken and the water-resistant, closely knit plumage of a duck required careful differentiation. The Rijksmuseum's collection of Dutch still life is among the greatest in the world, and this work occupies an important place within it as evidence of how thoroughly Van Aelst had synthesised his Dutch training with the more theatrical light effects he observed in Italy.

Van Aelst uses a relatively warm, amber-toned ground for this composition, allowing that warmth to show through the thin layers of the background and contribute a unified tonal atmosphere. Poultry feathers are distinguished by species: closely rendered individual filaments for softer plumage, broader washes for areas of flat colour. Lead white is used confidently for the brightest highlights on metal and glassware, if present, and for the pale bellies of the birds.