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W hat fascinates me most about still life art is that the meaning behind each piece often transcends the objects on the canvas. Consider a small oil lamp, the flame of which has just gone out, smoke still thinly drifting upward and away from the window; a stack of books and a writer’s quill lie beneath a skull sitting uncomfortably on top; an overturned glass is balancing precariously in front of the candlestick. Each of these elements has a very specific meaning for those in the know.
When artists choose objects not for their form but for their meaning and allegory, art comes alive, communicating stories via a secret language that only the astute observer can read. Truly reading still life art is a linguistic skill, one that is slowly fading into history. But learning the lost language of still life art opens your eyes to a rich, multilayered story you’d never know was there. My goal is to revive this language.
This month, as part of the Modern Evening and The Now and Contemporary Evening auctions, Sotheby's will offer some important still life paintings, and they asked if I’d be willing to write on the subject, one that’s very dear to my heart.
Still life comes in many genres: flowers, banquet or breakfast, ostentatious displays, animals and game. The more symbolic genres, vanitas and memento mori, set the tone for the rest. The Dutch masters who developed these genres had a profound impact on the artists and movements that followed. Fashion design, contemporary artists, even modern advertising draws upon this visual language established centuries ago—as do the aforementioned works by Cézanne and Hockney.
As a result, learning about one genre means we can deepen our understanding of the others. We step back in time alongside the modern and contemporary artists to be inspired afresh by the secrets of Old Masters.
The Dutch Master Painters were the kings of moral symbolism and the Dutch Golden Age (roughly 1588 to 1672) was a flourishing period in which art was abundant, accessible, and in nearly every home. Emblem books that explained symbolism and allegorical imagery were popular, which meant that, unlike today, non-experts could read a painting like a book. Jacob Cats’ Moral Emblems was so popular he was called “Father Cats.”
The Masters painted allegory with flowers, insects, and timepieces, often in ostentatious scenes, partly to signal their moral values to viewers and partly to encourage viewers to be virtuous themselves. Books were a recurring theme, used to belittle the vanity of owning expensive texts solely for display. Oysters, an aphrodisiac, decried the lusts of the affluent. But far from judgmental, these paintings were meant as reminders: abandon vice and seek the virtues of temperance, love, chastity, and humility. This genre came to be known as vanitas (derived from a quote from King Solomon in Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity”), and the earliest known vanitas piece was painted in 1603 by Jacques de Gheyn II in the Netherlands.
The Dutch were a people of faith, so their moral fervor inevitably worked its way into still life via the memento mori. Memento mori, which literally means “remember death,” is an ancient Christian practice rooted in early Orthodox Christian tradition.
The Christian Dutch embodied this active practice in their 16th and 17th century still life art. The oeuvre is characterized by skulls, roses, hourglasses, and extinguished candles. But these symbols are not communicating morbidity, instead they’re a call to experience something deeper than superficial beauty, deeper than moral beauty and deeper than “right and wrong.” They’re a call to connect with the only authentic beauty in their eyes: God.
The skull, the most obvious memento mori, is death in its purest form. A human head is stripped of all dignity, honor, and pomp. A candle, wax dripping down the sides, soft, hot, just extinguished, red-embered wick, smoke drifting, fading toward the heavens: the ascendant soul. The hourglass signifies time running out. Insects warn against decay and corruption, whilst the tipped glass on the table indicates mortality and a life that has ended.
Today, this may seem incredibly morbid. To the Dutch, though, these artifacts signified hope: death was inevitable, but it also had meaning.
While much of the older techniques employ deep symbolism, more modern and contemporary still life paintings are less obviously symbolic. Not all art can be decoded with a book. Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, in particular, adopted the format in a more individualist manner. Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh all painted wonderfully dramatic still lifes.
The items in the paintings were perhaps not meaningful in and of themselves, but the way in which they were painted—the handling of paint, juxtaposition of light and darkness—tell a story of these artists’ evolving oeuvres and their mindsets at the time. Cézanne’s continual experimentation with still life resulted in a collection of paintings widely praised as his most accomplished and innovative.
Cézanne's still lifes are extraordinary for their daringly modern depiction of multiple perspectives simultaneously, and use of directional brushwork and careful calibration of color to build depth in a wholly new manner. In creating Cubism, Picasso and Braque took direct inspiration from his exacting arrangements.
“Still lifes are arguably the most important throughline in Paul Cezanne’s career–charting the course of the artist’s evolution and forming the foundation of Modernism in his radical approach to depth and perspective,” says Allegra Bettini, Head of Modern Art Marquee Sales. “Pichet et fruits sur une table is one of the finest examples remaining in private hands and contains all the hallmarks of his genius, from the constructive brushwork to simultaneous depiction of multiple angles and extraordinary sensitivity to light and color.”
One hundred years later, in 1996, David Hockney was inspired to create a body of Flower paintings following a visit to a Johannes Vermeer exhibition in the Hague. Alliums was painted in the same year that Hockney lost two of his closest friends. In the vanitas tradition, flowers often represented the fragility of life, which is echoed beautifully in this piece.
Hockney spoke often of his admiration for Cézanne, particularly his multiple-viewpoint perspectives which he utilized in later painting series. He would also, like Cézanne, return again and again to still life painting, shifting and perfecting his technique as the decades progressed. Alliums, with its jewel-toned colors and active brushwork, is an excellent example of Hockney’s ability to merge classical techniques with his distinct and contemporary point of view.
"David Hockney's floral still lifes of the 1990s cast centuries of art history in technicolor,” says David Galperin, Vice Chairman, Head of Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s New York.“ Rachel Ruysch, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and countless others rendered and revisited this subject, and you feel the heft of art history in Alliums with a remarkable gravity and levity that only Hockney can achieve. This picture brings to life the love of looking and joy of painting that made Hockney a true titan of our generation."
Matisse spent hours at the Louvre studying and copying the Dutch master painter Jan Davidsz. de Heem’s Un dessert. So moved, he later went on to remake it in a Cubist style as Still Life after Jan Davidsz. de Heem's "La Desserte" (1915). Where de Heem saw meaning, Matisse saw an irresistible study of color and structure.
(As an aside, I was honored to become acquainted with Matisse’s grandson, Claude Duthuit, when he was alive. His apartment in New York was full of his grandfather’s drawings and paintings, many of them still lifes. I remember being struck by just how many there were.)
Vanitas symbols communicate the fleeting nature of earthly pleasure, while memento mori symbols remind the viewer of death, not because of morbid interests, but because they were a people overflowing with faith, love, and artistic sensibility.
The Dutch master painters could see, I’d argue, deeper than most. They were inspired to capture their faith in art. And though the Impressionists were explicitly rejecting notions of strict codes and religious art, their focus on fleeting moments, and the ephemerality of nature is harmonious with many of the symbols in Dutch still life. Contemporary artists like Hockney, stripped the canvas down even further whilst playing with meaning in equally emotional ways.
Today, as a contemporary fine art photographer, I am doing my own part to bring this genre into new form. I work in the 400-year-old Dutch vanitas tradition, and run an educational Instagram series with a corresponding book called The Secret Language of Art; a modern version of the traditional emblem book.
When art has purpose and meaning, it tells a story that transcends the mundane and inspires true appreciation, reflection, and ultimately awe. When we can read this secret language in art, it opens us up to experiencing beauty beyond our senses, in the deepest parts of ourselves. When we speak the language of art, we get to listen to the artist. These paintings are living and timeless links to the people who created the art.
