ART
The Lesson of Still-Life
WHENEVER I defend the view that all forms of painting reveal the ideas and feelings of the artist, my opponent always ends up by saying triumphantly : " Well, what about still-life ? A painting of apples on a plate tells you nothing about the views of the artist on life at large." This has always seemed to me a false argument, and now the exhibition at the Matthiesscn Gallery provides an opportunity for going into the question. For it contains about a hundred paintings of still-life from the seventeenth century to the present day, and though there arc some serious gaps—there is, for instance, no work by Cezanne- the show yet provides much material for analysing the real nature of still-life.
The argument quoted above, like so many arguments against the literary interpretation of the visual arts, is based on examples taken only from recent paintings. It is true that in still-life as it is treated today the subject does not generally matter, but in earlier times this was not the case.
It was the Dutch painters of the seventeenth century who first explored the possibilities of still-life. It gave them a good opportunity of displaying the home comforts and luxury which the extension of trade had brought to Holland. A familiar type of Dutch painting at this period shows a pile of plate, porcelain, stuffs, glass and other valuable household objects (e.g., No. 3t). The Dutch would take pleasure in this assertion of their solid wealth. They would also enjoy the manual and unimaginative skill which rendered the outside appearance of these objects brilliantly but without comment. Other types are addressed to a more scientific interest, such as the minute renderings of flowers or butter- flies (34, 35) ; though these often appeal by the choice of strange and queerly-formed plants and animals, to a love of the odd in Nature which led to the formation of those Wunder- kammern of the same time in which paintings were mixed in with rare stones, mechanical toys and natural curiosities.
Very often, however, in the seventeenth century still-life was used for directly allegorical and symbolical purposes. The collection at Matthiessen's contains few examples of this kind, but No. 6, which shows a series of mathematical instru- ments with a palette, brushes and books, must be meant as a symbolical representation of the liberal arts. Far commoner than this are those intended as a Memento Mori or Vanitas. Certain objects which from the Middle Ages have been used to recall death and the passage of time recur constantly in these paintings—a skull, a burnt-out candle, an hour-glass, a wormed book, a watch, dead flowers. In other cases there seems to be an allusion to the symbolism of the Five Senses, so popular in portrait and figure painting at this time. A particularly instructive example of yet another type of allegorical still-life was sold in London this week. On one side it showed a harpsichord on which were other musical instruments. On the other stood a table with silver cups, a rare shell and an oriental vase. The drawers of the table were open and in them were heaps of money, tidily arranged. Behind was a terrestrial globe on which was clearly written Mar di India. The clue to the whole meaning was given by a piece of paper sticking out from one of the drawers. On it was written a quotation from Cicero, which may be rendered : " The same order should obtain in accounts as in musical harmony." We may therefore suppose that the painting was executed for a merchant who knew the value of keeping clear accounts, and had made his money in trade with the East. The musical instruments and the globe are therefore intro- duced to point a moral, not merely as decorative elements.
This is an unusually explicit case of still-life having a direct moral lesson, but such an intention is latent far more often than is generally imagined. It is only in the last century that painters have taken to still-life because they were afraid to paint anything of literary interest, and because they were compelled to escape to inoffensive apples on plates. And this in itself tells us a great deal about their state of mind. They evade painting the world because they have lost grip of it. It is interesting, however, to see how recently this attitude came in, for there is an early still-life by Cezanne exactly on the lines of the Dutch Vanitas with skull, burnt- out candle and all the other symbols. It is only since that date that still-life has come to be an abstract form of painting.
ANTHONY BLUNT.
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