Still Life. Victoria Charles

      Still Life

      “Cézanne made a living out of a teacup, or rather in a teacup he realised the existence of something alive. He raised still life to such a point that it ceased to be inanimate. He painted these things as human beings, because he was endowed with the gift of divining the inner life in everything. His colour and line are alike suitable to the spiritual harmony. A man, a tree, an apple – all were used by Cézanne in the creation of something that is called a ‘picture’, and which is a piece of true inward and artistic harmony.”

Wassily Kandinsky

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      Still Life with Large Earthenware Jar

      Félix Vallotton, 1923

      Oil on canvas, 81 × 65.3 cm

      Galerie Vallotton, Lausanne

      One should treat with doubt the extremely widespread conviction that the still life has been in art since time immemorial. We know of a large number of “still lifes” from the art of antiquity, but it cannot serve as the sole criterion for today’s definition of still life in art history.

      Two Skulls on the Embrasure of a Window

      Hans Holbein the Younger

      tempera varnished on wood, 33 × 25 cm

      Public collection, Art Museum, Basel

      We should therefore avoid a confusion of the genre’s history with its pre-history. It seems that the researchers link the history of the still life with easel painting, “where its laws manifest themselves most distinctly and have direct parallels with the emergence of other genres within painting.”

      Game and Fruits

      Peter Boel

      Oil on canvas, 61.5 × 81 cm

      Museum of Western and Oriental Art, Odessa

      The Dutch term “stilleven” (“the quiet life”), first recorded in the year 1650, came into general use only towards the end of the seventeenth century. Later still, it was taken up by the English and German languages, and only then was its meaning inherited by the French term “nature morte,” which shows however some degree of narrowing down, if compared with the original connotation. The fate of the still life proved completely different from that of the majority of genres in painting.

      Flowers and Fruit

      Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer

      Oil on canvas, 74.5 × 122 cm

      The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

      Fruits

      Jean-Baptiste Oudry, 1721

      Oil on canvas, 74 × 92 cm

      Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

      Alexandre-François Desportes, the noted still-life artist, “painter of the royal hunts”, was still entirely in the thrall of the Flemish school, as can be seen from Still Life with a Hare and Fruit and Still Life with Game and Vegetables (both in the Hermitage).

      Still Life with a Hare and Fruits

      François Desportes, 1711

      Oil on canvas, 115 × 199 cm

      The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

      He displays the same refined naturalism in the juxtaposition of different textures to create his effect – foliage, fruit, stone, wood, feathers, wool, fur, and so on.

      Still Life with Fruits

      Jean-Baptiste Oudry, 1721

      Oil on canvas, 74 × 92 cm

      The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

      His still lifes might also include works of art such as, say, the relief by Duquesnoy included in Still Life with Dead Game and Vegetables – one of the highly fashionable “quotations” found in French painting from that time (and one more proof of close Franco-Flemish links in art).

      Still-Life with Game and Vegetables

      François Desportes, c. 1700

      Oil on canvas, 121 × 135 cm

      The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

      In short, in this modification the genre demonstrates what Boris Vipper termed a striving “to turn the still life into living nature”. Diderot notes in 1765 that it is to Chardin that we owe the fact that things, which had till then imitated perhaps beautiful, but nonetheless alien prototypes, those “silent creations” finally began to speak in French. Chardin recreated the genre, as it were, on the basis of the national artistic tradition.

      Still Life with a Leg of Veal

      Jean-Baptiste Oudry, c. 1720

      Oil on canvas, 98 × 74 cm

      The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

      Still Life with the Attributes of the Arts

      Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, 1760s

      Oil on canvas, 53 × 110 cm

      Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

      It is important to bear in mind that the system of genres is anthropocentric: even if the human being is not shown directly in a work, the human element forms the basis of any genre orientation.

      Still Life with the Attributes of the Arts

      Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, 1760s

      Oil on canvas, 112 × 140.5 cm

      The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

      That means that objects arranged to make something independent, forming something whole, do not supplant, but only mask the human subject expressing in a new manner its aim with regard to the world as a whole.

      Fruits

      Jean-François van Dael, 1808

      oil