CLAESZ., Pieter

The work of the Dutch still-life painters who appear around 1620 corresponds to the tonal trend of the landscapists of van Goyen’s generation. Pieter Claesz and Willem Claesz. Heda, popularizers of the breakfast piece, are the principal representatives of this phase. Claesz, the father of the landscapist Nicolaes Berchem, was born at Berchem (probably the village near Antwerp). Heda’s origins are obscure. Both were primarily active at Haarlem and underwent similar stylistic developments.

Their early works show the influence of the older still-life painters, but they soon limited themselves to the description of a simple meal set near the corner of a table - some bread and cheese, a herring on a pewter dish, a glass of beer or wine, perhaps a silvery pewter vessel, and a white crumpled tablecloth - just enough to suggest a light breakfast or snack. These objects, which always look as if they had been touched by someone who is still close by, are no longer treated as isolated entities: they are grouped together, forming masses along a single diagonal axis. But more important, Pieter Claesz and Heda reacted to the comprehensive forces of light and atmosphere which envelop us and the things with which we live, and they found means to express their reactions to these forces as accurately, immediately, and intensely as possible. As a result, they seem to animate their simple subjects. With a new pictorial mode, they achieve a more dynamic spatial and compositional treatment.

The foreground of their unpretentious arrangements becomes spacious, and there is clear recession. Instead of vivid local colours, monochromatic harmonies with sensitive contrasts of valeurs of low intensity are favoured, without, however, a loss of the earlier regard for textural differentiation. From the point of view of composition and of colouristic, tonal, and spatial treatment the perfectly balanced still-lifes by Claesz and Heda are among the most satisfying Dutch paintings made during the century.

Claesz has a more vigorous touch than Heda. He was also a man of simpler tastes. Heda depicts oysters more frequently than herrings, and after 1640 his compositions became larger, richer, and more decorative. To obtain a more monumental effect, during his maturity Heda often abandons the traditional horizontal format for a vertical one. Ornate silver vessels and costly ‘fa�on de Venise’ glasses, at the time blown in the Netherlands as well as Venice, intensify the contrasts of valeurs, and touches of colour provided by the pink of sliced hams and ripe fruit are combined with an increased chiaroscuro.

This painting, one of the few youthful works by the artist, depicts a still-life with a Roemer, a roll, smoked herring, a watch, smoker’s requisites, hazelnuts and a brazier.

This intimate, small-format picture belongs to a group of the artist’s paintings from the mid-1620s, in which Claesz. focused on combining two types of still-life, the breakfast piece and the so-called Toebackje or smoking still-life.

This still-life depicts a Roemer, an overturned pewter jug, olives and a half-peeled lemon on pewter plates. Claesz. used some of the individual elements (e.g. the overturned jug, the lemon peel dangling over the edge of the table) in his earlier compositions.

This painting depict a still-life of lemons and olives, pewter plates, a roemer and a fa�on-de-Venise wine glass on a ledge.

Pieter Claesz. started painting still-lifes at the start of the 1620s. His early works are in the tradition of his Haarlem peers Floris van Dijck, Nicolaes Gillisz. and Floris van Schooten, with a colourful palette and a relatively high viewpoint, and comprising many objects and foodstuffs such as various kinds of fruit. By the middle of the decade, when his chosen viewpoint becomes lower, he was painting still-lifes of great beauty and of a remarkably high quality,

The present painting dates from the moment when Pieter Claesz. arrived at a fully monochromatic style. Claesz. achieves this by choosing objects of a limited palette to occupy his composition. The tones throughout are predominantly yellow and green. There are no other colours anywhere within the painting. The vast background is rendered in a muted yellow-green, moving from darker tones to the left to lighter ones towards the right, where there is stronger illumination.

The painting is signed in monogram and dated lower right: PC Ao .1629.

This panel depicts a still-life with a silver beaker and an overturned Roemer, with bread, a knife and a lemon and olives on two pewter plates. It shows the artist’s pared down approach to still life, in which he abandons the more luxurious displays of his early years in favour of compositions with fewer objects in simpler arrangements. Claesz. used some of the individual elements adopted here in other compositions, too.

It was long believed that the painter was born in Germany, although archival evidence may suggest that he was probably born in Berchem, near Antwerp. In any case, he spent his entire career in Haarlem. He seems not to have used the surname “Berchem” that was adopted by his son, Nicolaes Berchem. He was an important exponent of the ‘ontbijt’ or breakfast piece. Known for his subdued, monochromatic palette and his subtle use of light and texture. His later work became more colourful and decorative.

The painting depicts a still-life with a Roemer, a pheasant, a silver salt-cellar with a stoneware jug, fruits and bread on a white cloth.

This still-life shows a Delft jug, ham on a pewter plate, a glass of wine, fish and a roll on a table covered with a white cloth. The typical late work by the artist is signed in monogram and dated middle right: PC / 1654.

In the still-lifes of Claesz., the objects are ordered in a simple way; they are just laid out on the table. The light is even; shadows are used only to emphasize each object’s plastic form.

This painting depicts a tabletop still-life with large Roemer filled with wine, Berkemeyer lying on its side and fruit. It is a collaborative work by Pieter Claesz. and Roelof Koets, the only one signed and dated by both painters. The right-hand side with the apples, grapes and foliage was painted by Koets, the other parts by Claesz.

The two painters were friends, living in Haarlem. They testified several times together as witnesses in lawsuits. They produced ten collaborative paintings, dating between 1644 and 1653. In these paintings Koets’s hand can easily be distinguished: his sidelong lighting is more dramatic and more playful than that of Pieter Claesz., his foliage comes out stronger against a darker background, his oblong grapes are build up out of thin transparent layers.

The painting is signed and dated lower left: A PC 1651.

This painting is one of the first known still-lifes By Pieter Claesz, whose subsequent production belonged to the monochromatic painting movement developed in the 1620s.

The affluent citizens of Haarlem were particularly open to the refined taste displayed in breakfast still-lifes by artists like Pieter Claesz. and Willem Claesz Heda. In this painting, a half-full rummer, an overturned tazza or wine-cup, an inverted Berkemeier glass, a silver plate and a knife, together with bread, hazelnuts, a lemon cut and peeled, oysters and a little paper cone of pepper, are all artfully organised to produce a fictive effect of serendipity.

The simplicity and directness achieved in this work were gradually distilled by Claesz over a period of several years, in which he could be said to have reached a moment of early maturity. The clarity of light, its suggestion of textures, casting of shadows, and creation of substance and space testify to Claesz’s exceptional powers of observation.

The painting is signed and dated at the lower left.

The stylistic phases and fluctuations in aesthetics through which the Dutch landscape passed had their direct counterpart in still-life. The silvery tone which dominates in this Still-life by Claesz., muting the colours and subtly adjusting the objects to each other, directly relates to the tonal direction landscape took after 1630.

This colourful still-life is an early work by the artist. One innovation which he introduced and later became standard was showing the left edge of the table, by which means he increased the feeling of depth in his paintings.

It is worth noting that in this monochrome ‘banketje’, which is dominated by shades of grey, green and silver, the elements of the painting have been reduced to a small number of vessels. Thus the composition of the painting is determined by an overturned silver goblet, a half empty wine glass and two pewter plates. Although this is a so-called breakfast still-life (an onbijtje), hardly any food is shown, but only the sparse left-overs of a meal, such as the olive on the plate, where it forms some kind of optical barrier between the hollow foot of the goblet and the plate that reflects it. Unlike the overabundance of food in earlier Flemish still-lifes, this painting emphasizes a refinement of taste. Naive consumerism has been replaced by aesthetic sublimation under the influence of Protestant introspection and asceticism.

A jug and glass of wine, a snuffbox, pipes, spills, and coals smoldering in a small brazier - these attributes of the vices of smoking and drunkenness constitute a variant of the ‘vanitas,’ a still-life reminding the viewer of the transience of earthly life. Claesz. supplements the traditional subgenre with an element that increases the eloquence of the didactic message: the banality of the objects that accompany us on the short journey from birth to death.

Nearly all Dutch still-lifes include - to a greater or lesser extent - the aspect of vanitas, a lament about the transience of all things. It is often symbolized by objects such as a skull or a clock, as in this painting, where the effect is enhanced by an overturned wine glass and an extinguished candle. Claesz’s metaphysical criticism concentrates on book knowledge and its futility in the face of eternity. The claim of the enlightenment that book contains knowledge, experience and thoughts that were permanently valid beyond the life-span of an individual is met with resigned scepticism. With hues of grey, brown and green that tend to add up to a general ‘monochrome’ impression, Claesz’s still-life was painted at a time when European book market was going through a phase of considerable expansion.

This painting represents a vanitas still-life with a book, a glass roemer, a skull, a lute, a pack of cards and piece of parchment on a table. This is probably the last known vanitas still-life executed by the artist. Although Claesz. started painting vanitas still-lifes in the 1620s the majority of his works in this genre were executed in the 1650s. During the last decade of his life he favoured grander, more detailed compositions in contrast to his earlier sober style.

In his Vanitas with Violin and Glass Ball, Pieter Claesz expounds a theorem of his art. The eye is guided to the various details by the lighting. The overturned glass, drained to the very last drop, seems to symbolize the briefness of worldly pleasures. The pocket watch is facing away from us and has its back open, as if someone had tried to fathom the mysterious nature of time. The violin, its bow lying obliquely across its strings, is angled diagonally towards the background. The instrument probably symbolizes the comparison and rivalry between the two arts of painting and music. Together with the book, the quill and its holder refer to writing, literature and the logocentric character of the vanitas.

The glass ball is a fascinating, unusual motif. Reflected in its spherical surface is a self-portrait of the artist at his easel. Since he is present in effigie (i.e. in image), the artist does not need to place his signature on the panel, which consequently becomes a true autobiographical document: “pictor in tabula” - the painter is in the picture. The reflection of Claesz’s self-portrait in his still-life may also be understood as a pointer to the fact that every painting conceals more than it reveals. In its reflective fragility, the glass ball also recalls a soap bubble, a conventional symbol in still-life painting for the fatal frailty of human life - man is like a soap bubble.