Banquet Piece

Jan Davidsz de Heem painted this banquet table around 1640, probably in Antwerp where he was working at the time. He was the most inventive still life painter of the Dutch Golden Age, and this is one of his largest and most elaborate compositions. A table is loaded with food and objects. A large ham sits on a pewter plate at the center. Around it: oysters on the half shell, a basket of fruit, a bunch of grapes, peaches, a lemon peeled in a long spiral, a glass of wine, a silver goblet, a bread roll, a knife. A white cloth drapes across the table. In the background, a dark wall and a column suggest a grand interior. The painting is roughly 59 by 79 inches, large for a still life. De Heem painted this during a period when the banquet still life, or 'pronkstilleven' (ostentatious still life), was at its peak. These paintings were displays of wealth and abundance, and they were also exercises in technical virtuosity. Each object presented a different challenge: the translucence of the grapes, the iridescence of the oyster shells, the texture of the ham, the spiral of the lemon peel. De Heem handled all of them with a precision that borders on the obsessive. De Heem was born in Utrecht in 1606 and spent most of his career in Antwerp, where he was influenced by Flemish still life painters like Frans Snyders. He returned to Utrecht in the 1670s. His work was enormously influential: his son Cornelis de Heem and his followers Abraham Mignon and Rachel Ruysch all painted in his style. Oil on canvas, 150 by 200 centimeters. De Heem painted with a smooth surface, building each object in thin layers. The lemon peel is a single, continuous spiral of yellow paint that curls over the edge of the table. The grapes are built in layers of translucent green and purple over a white ground. The oysters are painted in grey and silver with a few touches of pink for the flesh. This print works in a dining room, where the banquet subject suits the setting. The warm colors of the food and the dark background pair with wood furniture, candlelight, and white tablecloths. The 18x24 size gives the individual objects enough room to be appreciated. In a larger dining room, the 16x20 framed version fills a side wall. The painting has been in the Rijksmuseum since 1808.