BOELEMA DE STOMME, Maerten

Maerten Boelema de Stomme’s work belongs to the tradition of the so-called ‘monochromatic’ style of still-life painting, developed by Pieter Claesz. and Willem Claesz. Heda in Haarlem in the 1630s and 1640s. During this period they concentrated on breakfast (ontbijtjes) and banquet (banketjes) pieces, characterised by a simple and harmonious arrangement of objects on a table-top, painted in a limited range of colour and tone. Maerten Boelema’s dated works are confined to the years when he was working in Heda’s studio and encompass a similar range of subjects to those favoured by his master.

The present canvas shows a still-life of a roemer, a peeled lemon and an overturned tazza. Often the objects represented also appear in Heda’s still-lifes, indicating a sharing of props in the studio. Occasionally it appears that artists from different studios also exchanged props: for example, objects featuring in Boelema’s picture also appear in compositions by Pieter Claesz.

Boelema’s work, especially in composition, owes much to his master, and several of the objects included in the present work are borrowed from Heda’s paintings.

The painting depicts a still-life with a stoneware jug, a flute, a roemer, shrimps, bread and tobacco on pewter plates, shrimps in a wan-li porcelain bowl, together with a knife, all on a draped table with a white tablecloth. It is signed centre left: M.B. de Stomme.

A “tiny banquet” or “small breakfast” is best seen as the sober counterpart to the ostentatious Dutch 17th century still-lifes. The number of objects portrayed is limited, the colour palette muted: black, white, grey and brown in every shade define the atmosphere. Connoisseurs frequently deprecate Maerten Boelema de Stomme’s often slightly out-of balance and over-busy compositions, with objects piled one on top of another. However, this painting is repeatedly cited as a time when Boelema de Stomme equals his teacher Heda.

A round, voluminous object in the form of a bearded man’s crock placed in a diagonal beam of light is chosen to form the centre of a composition which seeks to perform a dangerous balancing act, its excess weight having to be neutralised over the rest of the painting. A second eye-catching item, a precious nautilus beaker, is placed on the one visible corner of the table, reflecting the white of the table cloth and standing out starkly against the dark, neutral background of the upper right-hand corner. The oval and circular shapes of the plates with simple foodstuffs echo and inter-link the shapes of the main objects. A fluted glass, flanked to the right by a step glass, provide the top of a triangle in the composition. The salt cellar and an overturned berkemeier wineglass fill the lower left corner of the tableau.

A second connecting line runs between three objects: a knife with a blocked handle, to the left on a plate, refers to its dark black knife-case, the down-hanging top of which counterbalances the upward movement of the fluted glass. Only an opened walnut and hazelnut, close to the pealed lemon, suggest that the laid table has already been touched. The nuts strewn between the other objects produce a concentration of smaller ovals that attract the viewer’s eyes as to the centre of a whirlpool: the nuts themselves, the opening of the crock, its cover, the surface of the cut-open fruit, the wire foot and the thorn knobs on the wineglass, the ball-feet of the salt cellar.

The artist sparingly distributes a few yellow colour accents over the picture surface in the lemons and the bread roll. A blue-green touch is visible solely in the mother-of pearl sheen of the nautilus shell cup: the rarer something is, the greater its value.