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for Pieter Claesz
Pieter Claesz
Dutch, 1597/98 - 1660
Dutch painter of German birth. He apparently spent his entire career in Haarlem, where he specialized in still-life paintings. Well over 100 works survive, dating from 1621 to 1660. Most of his pictures are dated and monogrammed pc. Since those initials were shared by the Antwerp still-life painter clara Peeters, several attributions are disputed.
Claesz’s depictions of modest objects arranged on a table-top exemplify the development of Dutch still-life painting in the 17th century . Early in his career he was an outstanding exponent of the monochromatic still-life, which echoed the ‘tonal’ landscapes produced by contemporary Haarlem landscape painters. Claesz employed colour schemes unified by a predominating neutral tone, typically favouring warm browns, golds and olive greens, which he sparked with the yellows and reds of fruits or contrasted with the cool greys of silver and pewter. He experimented with both daylight and candlelight, often causing a shadow to fall diagonally on the background wall. Claesz’s earliest known work, Still-life with a Stoneware Jug (1621; England, priv. col., see Bergström, fig.), is a ‘breakfast piece’ (ontbijtje) in the manner of Haarlem still-life painters Nicolaes Gillis ( fl 1601–32), Floris van Dijck and Floris van Schooten. Bowls of fruits and berries, wine and olives are arranged at regular intervals beside a jug on a white damask tablecloth, in a compositional type that is usually termed ‘additive’. Local colour is strong and the viewpoint high, so as to invite inspection of the deliberately placed objects, hardly any of which overlap. Already, however, Claesz’s distinctive character is revealed in the unifying atmosphere, the convincing illusionism and the sense of space created by the diagonal arrangement.
The intimate grouping of fewer objects in a simple monumental design typifies Claesz’s mature or middle period. His remarkably simple compositions of the 1630s and 1640s are tightly knit and ingeniously yet naturally constructed, often around a dominating formal motif, such as the fanning diagonals in the Still-life with Smoking Implements (1638; priv. col., see Vroom, i, figs 39, 156). His works of this period often resemble those of his Haarlem colleague Willem Claesz. Heda in subject-matter, composition and monochromatic harmony, but Heda characteristically preferred cooler, more luminous effects captured with exceptional refinement. Claesz’s technique is sometimes meticulous, as in the Still-life with a Turkey Pie (1627; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), and sometimes vigorously free, as in the Breakfast Piece with a Ham (1643; Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.). He often painted vanitas still-lifes, with skulls, hourglasses and guttering flames that invite meditation on transience and death (example in The Hague, Mauritshuis). His breakfast pieces probably also have loosely constructed symbolic programmes, with complex meanings centred on the temptations of earthly goods. For example, wine might suggest the Eucharist, but it also connoted pleasurable indulgence and even drunkenness. Thus the viewer could contemplate the relative merit of spiritual and worldly values, an activity pertinent to Calvinist-dominated Dutch mercantile society.
In contrast to his earlier sober style and restrained palette, many of Claesz’s late paintings depict luxurious displays with bright colours and grand compositional rhythms. Still-life with a Basket of Grapes and a Crab (1651; untraced, see Vroom, i, fig.), in which Claesz probably collaborated with Roelof Koets (?1592–1655), is a representative example.
Claesz may have painted directly from life, or he may have relied on memory, imagination or drawings (though none survives). His compositions look plausible yet are sometimes difficult to recreate with actual objects. He evidently used artistic licence, disguising the artifice of his inventions with verisimilitude, a common practice among Dutch ‘realists’. The porcelain, glassware, metalwork and foods he depicted were of the sort found in the homes of the Dutch middle class, who in turn purchased Claesz’s paintings. Pieter Claesz seems not to have used the surname Berchem adopted by his son, the landscape painter nicolaes Berchem.
Anne W. Lowenthal. " Claesz, Pieter." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T017933 (accessed May 3, 2012).
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