Much appreciation and some extravagant praise has been lavished on
the still-life painters who, at the time when the higher aims of
artistic endeavour began to die out in Holland, displayed remarkable
ability. The cultivation of horticulture at Haarlem, the centre of the
tulipomania fever in the middle of the seventeenth century, may have
had an influence on the artistic presentation of inanimate nature;
this feeling was no doubt stimulated by the display made by the
goldsmiths in an age of great prosperity. Willem Claesz Heda, who was
born 1594, is among the earliest of the Dutch still-life painters, and
his picture (No. 2390) is dated 1637; he, however, did not die until
more than forty years later. Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-1684), the
painter of _Fruit and a Vase on a Table_ (No. 2391) and of another and
much larger picture (No. 2392), was the pupil of his father, David de
Heem; as he spent many years at Antwerp, he is sometimes regarded as
a Flemish painter. That Abraham van Beyeren (1620-1675?), who painted
several sea-pieces, was specially fond of copying the appearance of
fish, is seen from his _Still-life: Fish_ (No. 2326A), at the Louvre,
which has in recent years also acquired another work (No. 2312A) by
him. Willem Kalf (1621?-1693) may have studied under H. G. Pot, the
Haarlem genre-painter. He was evidently impressed with the chiaroscuro
of Rembrandt, and often placed the drinking-cups, wine-glasses, and
fruit on a richly-coloured tablecloth. He is here represented by four
examples, of which the _Dutch Interior_ (No. 2436) is the best. Eight
pictures by Jan Huysum (1682-1749), two by Jan van Os (1744-1808),
and one by C. van Spaendonck (1756-1839) belong to the latest phase
of art in Holland, and mark the decadence in full operation. It will
be noticed that the Louvre has a much larger selection of still-life
pictures than the National Gallery, which seems to regard achievements
of this kind with disdain.
Melchior Hondecoeter (1636-1695), the painter of the farmyard, gives
unmistakable proof of his power in his large signed _Eagle swooping
down on a Farmyard_ (No. 2405), and two rather smaller pictures (Nos.
2406-7).
Jan Weenix (1640-1719), who usually concerns himself with dead game
and birds, is working on the usual lines in three (Nos. 2610, 2611,
and 2612A) of his four pictures in the great French museum; the
other represents _A Seaport_ (No. 2612). He was the fellow-pupil
of Hondecoeter in the studio of his father, Jan Baptist Weenix
(1621-1660), who studied for a time under the early Dutch master,
Abraham Blomaert, and worked in Italy for four years. For that reason
the latter has adopted an Italian mode of signing his only picture (No.
2609) in the Louvre.