 | Willem van Aelst (artist) Dutch, 1626 - 1683 Still Life with Dead Game, 1661 oil on canvas overall: 84.7 x 67.3 cm (33 3/8 x 26 1/2 in.) Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund 1982.36.1 On View |
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The life-sized depiction of animals creates a tangible sense of reality. In fact, many Dutch still lifes are full-scale representations of the real objects they portray. This quarry fancifully includes a domestic rooster, wild hare and partridge, and several songbirds. Also hanging from the cords are two red velvet hoods used to train hunting falcons. The only sign of life is a fly attracted to the blood on the cock's comb.
Hidden in the shadows behind the game pouch's silver buckle, a classical bas-relief is carved in the marble pedestal. While nymphs watch, the chaste goddess of the hunt, Diana, splashes water on Actaeon, a mortal hunter who surprised her at her bath. In punishment for embarrassing Diana, Actaeon sprouts the antlers of a stag and will be killed by his own hounds.
Van Aelst, who worked in Paris and Florence before settling in Amsterdam, was one of the first still-life painters to depict hunt trophies. His superb illusions of fur, feathers, and flesh set a major precedent for later French, British, and American sporting still lifes.
 | Willem Claesz Heda (artist) Dutch, 1593/1594 - 1680 Banquet Piece with Mince Pie, 1635 oil on canvas overall: 106.7 x 111.1 cm (42 x 43 3/4 in.) framed: 143.8 x 147 x 10.5 cm (56 5/8 x 57 7/8 x 4 1/8 in.) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1991.87.1 Not on View |
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Heda's largest known painting appears, at first sight, to extend the hospitality of a sumptuous feast. Yet platters and knives teeter precariously over the table's edge, while goblets and compotes already have toppled. More obvious symbols of life's transience are at the left: a snuffed-out candle and a lemon, only half-peeled.
From the 1620s to the late 1640s, Dutch artists preferred a monochrome manner for their still lifes and landscapes. Heda was a master of such cool gray or warm tan color schemes. Here, the gold, silver, pewter, and Venetian glass play against a neutral setting and a white tablecloth. Somewhat later in the mid-1600s, brighter colors would characterize the classical period of Dutch painting.
A specialist in banquet still lifes, Heda also painted breakfasts and, as a writer in 1648 noted, "fruit, and all kinds of knick-knacks." Willem Claesz Heda taught several apprentices including his son, Gerrit Willemsz Heda (the sz at the end of many Dutch names is an abbreviation for szoon, meaning "son of"). Gerrit's Still Life with Ham, dated 1650, reveals a strong debt to his father's style and motifs.
 | Aelbert Cuyp (artist) Dutch, 1620 - 1691 The Maas at Dordrecht, c. 1650 oil on canvas overall: 114.9 x 170.2 cm (45 1/4 x 67 in.) framed: 151.1 x 205.1 x 15.2 cm (59 1/2 x 80 3/4 x 6 in.) Andrew W. Mellon Collection 1940.2.1 On View |
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Holland's Maas river flows through France and Belgium, where it is known as the Meuse. In Aelbert Cuyp's radiant vista over the Maas' estuary at Dordrecht, crowds jam the docks, bugles and drums sound fanfares, and cannons fire salutes. Near the end of the Eighty Years' War, Dordrecht hosted a two-week festival in honor of 30,000 soldiers. On July 12, 1646, a huge fleet of merchant and navy ships set sail to return the men home from active duty.
This vast, sunny composition specifically accents one figure: the young man standing in the dinghy beside the large ship. The anchored ships at the left create a wedge-shaped mass that points toward him, as do some rigging lines. His head lies directly before the horizon, and his stark black outfit is silhouetted dramatically against the palest area of the picture, the morning mist over the far shore. Because he wears a sash with Dordrecht's city colors of red and white, he may be the festival's master of ceremonies and is probably the patron who commissioned Cuyp to document this historic event.
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