Beauty and the Vanitas

One of the images on special display right now at the Hermitage Amsterdam is this still life by Willem Claesz. Heda.

Willem Claesz. Heda
Breakfast with a Crab, 1648
oil on canvas
118 x 118 cm
The State Hermitage Museum

Signed and dated in the lower left, it's a fine example of the ontbijt painting, a word that means breakfast in Dutch.

Heda, a Haarlem native, specialized in this type of painting during the second half of the 17th century, an era that has come to be known as the Golden Age of Dutch still life paintings.

Ontbijt, pronounced "onge-bite," even today appears frequently on cafe menus throughout The Netherlands as a way of describing a breakfast meal.

Indeed a couple days ago I ordered an ontbijt at the Barista Cafe on Grote Houtstraat in Haarlem. It included an omelette with cheese and tomato plus two slices of bread, washed down with a double latte, American style.

Heda's ontbijt painting contains a careful study of several objects used by the Dutch merchant class in the 17th century.

These include, on the right, a roemer, or rounded beer glass with bumpy knobs near its base.  Apparently glass blowers placed the knobs near the bottom to keep the glass from slipping out of greasy hands.

Near the center of the composition sits a silver pot, which may have been used for tea but may also represent an early example of the chocolate pot. The finial on top of its lid is the best piece of evidence to support the latter theory, although the date of the painting argues against it as a representation of the chocolate pot, since the earliest references to drinking chocolate do not appear in Europe for another 15 years.

The tall flute glass near the center would be used for beer, another beverage which was undergoing tremendous change.

alewife woodcut, n.d.

Before the 17th century, beer was brewed mostly by women. Known as alewives, these women would brew and bake in the home with the grains harvested from the fields.

Brewing, and then selling the beer out of the home, provided women with a measure of independence and personal sovereignty. It could be said that there was agency in the economics.

Unfortunately, with increasingly globalized trade connections in the 17th century between Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, new pressures came to bear on the alewives. Specialized artisans in Haarlem, Delft and Gouda began brewing commercially for export. Essentially men took over the beer brewing industry when it began to promise mercantile opportunities in a capitalistic system.

Leaving aside the beer to return to the glass from which it was drunk, the viewer of Heda's still life should recognize that although the flute glass originated in Holland, the shape is modeled after the Venetian design known as Façon de Venise. Its use in Haarlem is another example of the marketplace of skills and ideas prevalent during Holland's Golden Age.

On the left side of the table, a half peeled lemon dangles over the edge. This -- along with the crab, olives and bread -- suggests the image is a vanitas. The vanitas painting is something akin to a visual morality tale. Its primary intent is to remind the wealthy that their riches are transient. 

A peeled lemon loses its freshness. The cooked crab quickly goes bad. The message, then, is to enjoy these items but to not take them for granted. Nothing lasts forever. Thus pleasure, and the wealth that brings it, are fleeting. 

The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento possesses a similar vanitas by Heda. Although undated, the Crocker suggests it is an early example of Heda's work, dating to about 1631. 

Willem Claesz. Heda (1594-1680)
Still Life,  n.d. (c. 1631)
Oil on panel
Crocker Art Museum

Here the viewer can see many of the same symbols as from the later Hermitage image. The roemer, the fish and the silver pot are all characteristic of a Dutch still life. 

Clearly Heda was working out the technique, although this Crocker vanitas has a stilted and clunky feel to it in comparison with the later Hermitage image. Yes, the white table carpet and flute glass appear in both images. And, yes, the background is similarly plain in both. 

But the dramatic use of light and dark in the Hermitage is missing here in the Crocker, and the objects in this earlier composition fail to achieve the balance Heda wrought later in life.

For example, in the Hermitage image the table carpet hangs down below the table while the flute glass pierces upwards above the silver pot to form an apex. This gives the composition depth and dimension, a believable structure which is missing in the Crocker. The only hint of compositional order in the Crocker comes from the implied triangle of light above the objects. 

The key dangling from a blue sash and the open-faced watch in the silver tray in the Crocker act to remind the viewer of the passage of time, similar to the peeled lemon in the Hermitage image, but the blue color fails to pop against the dark folds of the table carpet, thus lessening the meaning of the symbols and diluting the impact of the whole image.

Therefore, while the details in the Crocker image are masterful -- for example, the inlaid abalone on the knife handle and the reflections in the silver-- it is clearly the work of an artist not yet in his prime.

Meet Maria van Oosterwijck

On a quiet hallway in the original section of the Crocker Art Museum there hangs a painting by Maria van Oosterwijck (1630 - 1693), one of the few women artists whose works Margaret Crocker purchased in 1872.

Roses and Butterfly
n.d. (c. 1675)
Oil on canvas 
14 1/2 in. x 11 1/2 in. (36.83 cm x 29.21 cm) 
Crocker Art Museum, E. B. Crocker Collection. 1872.488

Generally categorized as a still-life, this genre was quite common in 17th century Netherlands.

Imagery consisting of flowers, vegetables, sometimes a cooked fish or a bowl of fruit were Dutch artists' favorite still-life subjects. Often a fly or a bee, sometimes a worm or, in this case, a butterfly, can be seen too, usually as a reminder that although the subject is still there is yet life to it.

The still-life was a popular form used by the painter Maria van Oosterwijck, who produced floral images with allegorical themes known as vanitas. The distinction between a still-life and vanitas comes from the didactic nature of the latter. Still-lifes are decorative with an emphasis on the aesthetic; vanitas paintings, on the other hand, contain instruction, usually with a moral imperative. Van Oosterwijck excelled at both.

In this case, Roses and Butterfly has the appearance of a calm still life depicting a provence rose in the center, surrounded by two red striped carnations tied with a blue bow. A white butterfly kisses the rose, the only hint of action in the image.

provence rose

The provence rose, also known as a cabbage rose, or by its Latin name Rosa Centifolia, is a hybrid flower cultivated by Dutch gardeners in the 17th century. At least one source claims that it originated in Persia and arrived in Netherlands in the late 16th century, during a period of "vigorous trade and cultural exchange" between the two regions (Conan 45).

Known for its fragrance and large cabbage-like petals, the provence rose was a popular subject for still life painters of the period. Indeed it is still a prominant plant in gardens around the world today.

The carnations depicted here are a bit more problematic. Known as dianthus, the carnations provide ominous meaning. First, because they are associated with Zeus -- dios means god in Greek, while anthos means flower -- but second because many myths attribute a negative connotation to the red striped carnation, suggesting rejected love or regret. In this painting, the beauty of the fragrant rose is literally surrounded by symbols of power and rejection.

Art historians have determined that Maria van Oosterwijck painted most of her works between 1660 and 1689. Roses and Butterfly was likely painted in the 1670s, based on the subject matter and technique that she used when compared to other similar paintings with known dates. Margaret Crocker purchased this painting on or shortly before the 200th year anniversary of its creation.

There is also the matter of the white butterfly, known locally as vlinder. The Dutch have a proverb for this association between a rose and the butterfly: Een witte vlinder op een rode roos…wat een romantisch beeld. A white butterfly on a red rose ... what a romantic image. 

close-up, vlinder

Yet there is a kind of cynicism freighted to its meaning, particularly adjacent to the red striped carnations. The moth kisses the rose, which is romantic and gives the painting action, but it, too, is surrounded by rejection and refusal. What's more, the image of romance does not match the substance: is this a painting of romance refused? Might the provence rose be a lover scorned? 

These rhetorical questions are reinforced by the universal meaning of the butterfly as one of intransigence and transformation. Love cannot last forever in the face of refusal. It will change. It must change. And when it does, love flutters away like butterfly on the wing.

Finally there is the business with the blue ribbon. Maria van Oosterwijck uses a similar construction in many of her other paintings in the 1670s. Interestingly enough, the blue ribbon is often associated with the Order of the Blue Garter, a symbol of power for the Stuart royal family of England.

Equestrian Portrait of William of Orange
wearing the blue ribbon
Johann Voorhout
c. 1690

In 1672 -- about the time that Maria van Oosterwijck was painting this image -- William of Orange was the reigning Stadholder of Holland. He governed under the authority of the English king, his uncle King Charles II. 

In 1677, -- the upper date for the completion of Maria van Oosterwijck's painting -- William of Orange married his cousin, Mary Stuart. She was the daughter of his other uncle, James, Duke of York, who later became King James II when his older brother Charles II died in 1683. 

William's marriage to Mary solidified the royal houses of England and Holland. Their arranged marriage was a strategic alliance to hold off the threat posed by neighboring King Louis XIV of France. 

Might they be the butterfly and the rose, surrounded by the danger of Louis, the self-proclaimed Sun God king? Clearly this is a matter of conjecture, the answer for which we will never know. 

What can be known for certain is that this still-life, by one of the only women artists acquired by Margaret Crocker in 1872, contains far more meaning than the casual glance might suggest.