Still Life with Fruit and Flowers by Balthasar van der Ast

Still Life with Fruit and Flowers 1620 - 1621

balthasarvanderast

gouache

egg art

flower

possibly oil pastel

stoneware

fruit

underpainting

pastel chalk drawing

painting painterly

watercolour bleed

watercolour illustration

watercolor

"Still Life with Fruit and Flowers" (1620-1621) by Balthasar van der Ast is a classic example of Dutch Golden Age still life. The painting showcases the artist's mastery of detail, with realistic depictions of various fruits, flowers, and insects arranged on a draped table. The arrangement is expertly composed, leading the viewer's eye through a complex interplay of textures, colors, and forms. The inclusion of insects adds a sense of transience and the inevitable decay of nature, a common theme in Dutch still life painting.

Comments

rijksmuseum over 1 year ago

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Flowers, fruit, butterflies, spiders, grasshoppers, a hermit crab in its shell: this painting invites the viewer to marvel at God’s creation. When it was new, the painting must have made a more colourful impression than it does now. The grey tablecloth, for example, was once purplish-pink, but the layer of transparent red glaze that originally covered it has faded.