Still Life

Pieter Claesz

Period

1600-1650

Theme

Daily Life

Medium

Oil on panel

Current Location

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

The Story

Still Life is a 1657 oil painting by Pieter Claesz. It depicts burning coals in a golden brazier, dried fish, a knocked-over pot, bundled white rods, a knife and a drinking glass half-filled with a dark brown liquid, all sat upon a white surface.

Created in 1620 during the 1600-1650 period, this work belongs firmly within the daily life tradition. Pieter Claesz worked at a moment when the rivalry between Catholic Baroque drama and Protestant restraint reshaped what a painting could mean. Every gesture, fabric, and gleam of light was decoded by contemporary viewers like a private language.

Executed in Oil on panel, measuring 48 × 76.9 cm (18 7/8 × 30 1/4 in.); Framed: 76.2 × 108.8 × 7 cm (30 × 41 1/4 × 2 3/4 in.), the surface rewards close looking. Pieter Claesz builds the composition through layered glazes and a tightly controlled palette, letting cool shadows recede so that the warm, lit passages step forward.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. The apparent casualness is staged — objects and gestures are arranged to read as a moment caught rather than composed.

Today the painting is held by Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, where it remains a touchstone for understanding Pieter Claesz's contribution to Western art. It has been studied, copied, restored, and argued over for centuries — proof that great paintings keep generating new readings long after their creators have gone.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”

What the painting depicts

breakfast, table, plate, fish as food, Clupea harengus, wafer glass, beer, flagon.

From the museum

Around 1600, as the Dutch economy boomed, large-scale still lifes depicting luxury goods emerged as a genre that appealed to a sophisticated clientele. Pieter Claesz. was a leading painter of a type of still life often described as a “banquet piece,” which featured sumptuous foods and opulent serving vessels, typically strewn across an elaborately dressed tabletop. These costly goods—like the lemon, olives, sweetmeats, and lace-edged damask tablecloth in this painting—were sometimes depicted in a state of decay to suggest the transitory nature of coveted earthly things. The well-preserved items here instead celebrate wealth and its lavish display.

Simeon B. Williams Fund

Materials & technique

Materials: oil paint, canvas.

Technique: panel painting, oil painting, painting, painting (image making), painting techniques.

Inscriptions: Inscribed in ligature: PC (on knife blade).

Provenance

Probably Cassirer, Amsterdam [the mounts of photos in both the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague, and the Witt Library, London, are marked Cassirer, Amsterdam, 1939, though the picture was at the Art Institute from late 1935; the Witt photo is also annotated “Worcester, Mass.”; see also Vroom 1945 and Bergstrom 1956]. M. Knoedler & Co., New York by 1935 [receipt dated September 9, 1935 in Registrar’s office; the number A 1559 printed on a label on the back may be the Knoedler’s stock number]; sold to the Art Institute, 1935.