Still-Life

What can 300 years of exquisite drawing with painstaking draughtsmanship teach us about the hand of the DEA-CO-NI-EA? Here is the artist whose observation of values, rendering of lights and shadows, means something of beauty or truth done in the heat of enthusiasm bringing forth the finest results, the most spontaneous work. This is still-life.

Cups, rugs, simple kitchen utensils and the life of the people themselves- made fine subjects for colour and line, the glitter of wet fish, the deep and rich tones of meat and vegetables,. Either for luxurious abundance or for simplicity of colour, tone, values and line, the everyday life showed the artist just what he wanted.

Through finer perception of tone and envelopment, the observation of values and tonality, masterpieces like Vermeer’s milk-maid are highly decorative, rich in colour, well drawn with no air in them! The quality of fur and feather and other dead game in luxurious settings that produced excellence in craftsmanship and not carelessly done.

Every master had his pupils, father taught son, son taught his son, that soon became a trade that degenerated into drudgery of a painter and rarely into the genius of the artist. What was lost was the simplicity in seeing beauty with honesty which is the miracle of the hand, rendered only as a master could paint them.