Still Life and Silence

Pieter Claez       Still Life with Wine Glass and Silver Bowl      oil on panel      1635

I have been reading about Pieter Claez, and thinking about the silence of still life paintings.  Still Life is the quietest of genres: an entrance to the world of objects, observations of the things around us, those mute possessions that are always still, yet not without experience, which is a kind of living.  Claez's almost monochromatic paintings with their solemn, silvery-golden light are the direct predecessors, I think, to similarly spare and remarkably silent paintings by Chardin, Peale, and Morandi.

Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin    Still Life with White Mug   oil on canvas   1764

Raphaellle Peale     Still Life with Cake    oil on canvas    1816

Giorgio Morandi    Natura Morta    1946