Still Life

Willem Kalf was one of the most celebrated, sought after, and successful still-life painters of the seventeenth century. With its off-center pyramidal composition, this Still Life is a quintessential example of a compositional format that Kalf used in the late 1650s and early 1660s. The artist’s favorite Chinese porcelain fruit bowl, dating from the Wan-Li dynasty, is tipped at an angle to reveal the blue-on-white decorations that play off so well against the oranges, yellows, and reds of the fruit. A craze for Chinese porcelain had developed in the Netherlands after the capture of Portuguese ships carrying a large cargo of Wan-Li porcelain in March 1603 and continued throughout the century.

With their depiction of Oriental carpets, Venetian glass, Seville oranges, agate-handled knives, and above all Chinese porcelain, Kalf’s paintings evoke the far corners of the world. Placing these exotic objects against dark, contrasting backgrounds allowed Kalf to illuminate their forms with accents of light.