STILL-LIFE PAINTING, the art of painting inanimate objects for their beauty of colour, line or arrangement. It was first developed as an individual branch of easel painting by the artists of the Netherland school of painters. Families of artists chose this simple line of art for their life's work. Gold and sil ver cups, flagons and plates of porcelain and delft, oriental rugs and draperies, Venetian and Bohemian glass richly ornamented, and even jewels, scientifically arranged for scintillating effects, were motifs for some of the most brilliant artists. Simple kitchen utensils of brass and copper, with meat, fish and vegetables, made fine subjects for colour and line. The sparkle of metals, the glitter of wet fish, the deep and rich tones of meat and vegetables—what better material could the painter desire! Exquisite drawing, with painstaking draughtsmanship as a pri mary factor, resulted in paintings that were sought not only by the rich burghers, but by visiting princes and ambassadors. In every museum may be found these masterpieces, and although not so numerous as the many rows of portraits, genre and religious canvases, they, nevertheless, hold their high place in Dutch art.
The Flemish and Dutch artists felt, and so did many true lov ers of the fine arts of that time, that the subject of a picture was not the only motif worth while; that an arrangement beautifully composed, either for luxurious abundance or for simplicity in colour, tone, values and line, would make a noble work of art, in spite of what higher thought might find in portraying char acter in the portrait and deep feeling in the religious picture. They argued that a well painted still-life was a greater art pro duction than a badly painted Madonna, however well conceived.
Subject-matten—Pictures of the life of the people them selves, their houses, gardens, the interior of the splendidly fur nished homes of merchants and aristocrats, rich in hangings and elaborate in table service, made beautiful settings for the painter. The everyday life of the people around the artist showed him just what he wanted. Besides, it furnished a subject that was simpler to do than the literary picture, as well as being more straightfor ward and true. People in silk and velvet, visiting in well-appointed rooms to listen to music or to partake of wine and cake or fruit, served on silver or choice porcelain, were none the better as sub jects than a girl scouring a brass kettle in the kitchen.
That greatest part of the painter's knowledge, the observation of values, which means rendering the lights and shadows of a sub ject regardless of local colour, was first thoroughly understood by these artists, and is the basis of all sound painting. From the work of these men, still-life developed. The principle is the same, the interiors being to a great extent still-life. There is usually very little expression or movement needed for the figures. However well painted the heads, the clothes, even the glass of amber-col oured wine in the lady's hand, seem almost of the same interest as the head. Take the figures out and the pure still-life is the result. The simple composition of a few peaches on a piece of delft with a silver pitcher and an ornamented glass half full of wine is all that a master like Willem Kalf needs to make a supreme painting. Technique.—Of ten in the galleries and at exhibitions, critical visitors, some of whom are professional painters, ask: "What is still-life?" Reproducing the roundness and firmness of a red apple is not very different from the modelling of a head. Lovers of painting look for something different in a canvas, something that for them means beauty or truth—and not every one sees the same beauty in a picture painted by a master. Take Velazquez' "Aguador" for an example ; to the painter, a quiet study of model ling, with remarkable still-life; to one with perhaps no ability as a painter, a thoughtful study of a man's head; to another a beau tiful head of a boy. Velazquez had a number of interesting still life pictures. In "The Steward" and "Old Woman Frying Eggs," each has a single figure in the composition, but the pictures are evidently made for close studies of inanimate life, dead fish, meat, jars and glass, masses of objects, scattered all over the canvas. Rembrandt's "Flayed Ox" in the Louvre is a great example of noble quality, rich in colour, bold in treatment, closely observed in values, and of great simplicity—a masterpiece.