In responding to Still life: 1, Anthony Paul is right in saying that I had thrown something of a pall over Dutch seventeenth century still life by choosing a mediocre example. Rereading the piece, I see the offending sentence: Koelts’ Still Life on a Table probably epitomises everything that we think of — and probably dislike — in a seventeenth century Dutch still life. There are two things to say about this: 1) It is a sweeping generalisation, and 2) I had no need to seek out an example of bad art in order to make to make valid comparisons between the practices of Dutch seventeenth century still life painters and those of Cézanne, Gauguin, and Renoir (that was just about as silly as if I needed bad paintings of Gauguin and Renoir to compare with Cézanne). I could indeed have chosen, Willem Heda’ masterpiece as here reproduced. It is a wonderful painting: deeply satisfying in the extraordinary subtlety of its tonal range and variety of composition. It has, moreover, an absolute stability: just that quality that Cézanne achieved in his own very different way. Compare this painting with Koelts’ Still Life on a Table, and you will see what an inconsequential mess is the latter: the components of Koelts’ still life do not hold together; they have no significant placing; and who knows but that the grapes in the background right are not ‘levitating’. I think that Heda’s achievement lies in his directed painstaking. He has that rare ability — as of Jean-François Millet (and Cézanne) — to paint with the greatest of care without destroying the life of the work. I said of Koelts, in Still life: 1, that everything in his painting breathed a desire to represent on canvas exactly what was before his eyes, and that the result was therefore one of artifice and artificiality. But with Willem Heda we are in a very intimate space indeed. He transcends his materials, and that is why the fine details — as of the reflections in the glass — present no barrier to our vision.
It is interesting that on the Rijksmuseum website, this still life is described as being Monochrome. This seems surprising, given the colours of the lemon and tankard — and indeed of the background. ‘Monochrome’ suggests that the work consists only of grays, but the word properly to describe that is Grisaille. ‘Monochrome’ describes a painting where the range of colours is muted, and a close look at Heda’s still life shows that the majority of the painting consist of a range of colour–grays — that is, of grays made by mixing complementary colours (as red and green), as opposed to grays made by the simple mixture of black and white. By contrast, Van Gogh was anything but monochromatic:
Endnote
Half-peeled Lemon stands for casual excess, and so serves as a call for moderation, warning that life is not only sweet, but sour as well. See John Baldessari’s In Still Life on the web
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