Still life. The value and structure of things

Juan Sánchez Cotán · c. 1600–3

Sánchez Cotán painted this still life shortly before leaving Toledo for a Carthusian monastery in 1603. He had already enjoyed a successful career of about twenty years. Objects occupy a shallow niche with geometric precision. Hanging birds and fruit let him compare the shapes, weight and surfaces of ordinary things.

Willem Claesz Heda · 1635

The restricted gray and brown palette follows a Dutch fashion of the 1630s. Heda coordinates objects tonally despite their different actual colors. Such arrangements also supplied workshop teaching. His son Gerret later reused related motifs and painting methods.

Luis Meléndez · ca. 1772

This painting dates from Meléndez’s commission for forty-four royal still lifes at Aranjuez. A picnic basket, produce and cookware appear before a landscape. Everyday Spanish objects become part of an image of leisure at a royal country residence.

Clara Peeters · ca. 1612

Peeters helped establish European still life, a field accessible to women excluded from nude-model training. Precise flowers include fading blooms and insect damage. Observation of plants accompanies signs of change, while her signature on the ledge asserts authorship.

Jean Siméon Chardin · c. 1731–32

The unusual shape reflects the painting’s original use as a fireplace screen. Seen near floor level, it created the illusion of a table recessed into the opening. A projecting knife, overturned glass and meal remnants recall seventeenth-century Dutch still life. Chardin adapted those motifs to a functional object for a domestic room.

Jean Siméon Chardin · c. 1734

Chardin repeatedly used familiar kitchen objects, changing their positions and the food placed beside them. Already successful by 1730, he began painting small, restrained still lifes. Repeated objects let him test compositional balance. His work developed alongside the more elaborate courtly culture of Rococo.

Raphaelle Peale · 1818

The museum tentatively connects this picture with an 1819 Pennsylvania Academy exhibition. Its concentrated arrangement may reflect Peale’s study of Spanish still life. The early exhibition history remains uncertain, while the objects themselves invite unusually close attention.

Raphaelle Peale · 1822

Peale was among the first American painters to specialise in still life, studying Dutch seventeenth-century examples. Chinese porcelain made for the American market connects the domestic table with international trade. The glass vessel may contain hothouse strawberries, which his family experimented with growing outside Philadelphia.

William Michael Harnett · 1888

A partly open door, projecting nails and cast shadows make painted things seem to stand before a real surface. Such trompe-l’oeil pictures appealed particularly to middle-class collectors. Musical equipment supplies both the subject and the means of testing painted depth.

Yi Taek-gyun · late 1800s

Chaekgado began as an emblem of royal learning and later furnished aristocratic studies. Books and prized objects occupy painted shelf compartments. A hidden seal on the third panel from the right identifies the court artist Yi Taek-gyun. The screen decorates a room while presenting its owner's learned interests.

Martin Johnson Heade · 1885–95

After extensive travels, Heade settled in Florida at sixty-four. He began detailed arrangements of local flowers, including magnolias. Velvet heightens differences between smooth petals, leaves and heavy fabric. This late work combines botanical attention with an explicitly decorative studio arrangement.

Paul Cézanne · About 1893

Cézanne painted The Basket of Apples around 1893. Every object is recognisable, yet the table edges fail to align across the cloth. Different viewpoints coexist within one arrangement on the canvas.

Paul Cezanne · ca. 1890

Flowering plants were unusual subjects for Cézanne. His slow working process risked outlasting the blooms. Here, the fragile plant joins more durable apples and pottery. Claude Monet, himself an enthusiastic gardener, once owned the painting.

Paul Cezanne · 1893/1895

Cézanne returned to the same studio objects to study their relationships. He later included this very canvas within his Still Life with Plaster Cupid. The bottles, fruit, and cloth thus belonged both to an arrangement of things and to his own continuing work with earlier paintings.

Vincent van Gogh · 1890

In May 1890, before leaving the asylum at Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh painted four flower still lifes. This bouquet belonged to that group. Red pigment has faded, turning the originally violet irises blue and paling the pink background.

Vincent van Gogh · 1890

The roses were originally pink, but fading changed their relationship with the green ground. The paint was so thick that Van Gogh left the canvas at Saint-Rémy to dry in May 1890. It reached him later in Auvers. Present color and transport history reveal the work's material life.

Henri Matisse · 1906

Matisse placed his own sculptures among plants and vessels. The pale figures were probably plaster casts, later also issued in bronze. Brilliant colour and thick brushwork connect the painting with Fauvism, whose leading painter critics considered him. Still life let him compare painted surfaces with forms he had modelled himself.