Painting

The Goal Time On a table with a coated [cold pressed] damask cloth, in Willem Claez Hedas (1594-ca 1680) Meal piece, various objects, pewter, pewter barrel and wine glass are shown and centrally in the picture a pie, which has been cut into, and grapes, nuts and apricots in a central perspective underlined by the barrel projecting over the table. The meal piece developed around the 1630s and the genre was created by two masters in Haarlem, in Holland, Pieter Claesz (c. 15981661) and Willem Cleasz Heda. The latter is represented with a still life in the Johnson collection, dated 1649. Willem Claesz Heda almost always built up his image in the same way. The picture is broadly shaped and central in the picture is a flat cake or pie around which the rest of the petition is arranged. There are several flat tin plates that underline horizontal action and provide a balanced composition. Heda drew attention to the development that has taken place in the perspective and composed his pictures from the central perspective and built a harmonious picture from a holistic tone in which he let the light play with the different objects. In the past, still lifes had been painted with the objects quite rigid next to and on one another against a table surface that was seen from above, with many details in clear colours and without taking into account the effects of light. In Heda’s still lifes, the details have instead been subordinated to the whole, a greyish brown tone permeates the painting in an intricate play with the light. This still type is usually referred to as the tonic meal piece. There was probably a thought about it. Grey was considered to be the philosophical color and fit the Dutch Calvinist purse wives well. Holland became the main province of the Calvinist direction of faith in the year 1579, and in connection with it the art gained a national mark. Typically for the new republic, the bourgeoisie and the Reformed Church became contrary to the Catholic and Counter-Reformed Flanders where the nobility ruled. The art in Holland therefore became bourgeois, intimate and restrained albeit precious. The spare-flavoured fit church. Since it was iconoclastic (picture-hostile) and did not want pictures in connection with the worship of God, the religious art became widespread. The bourgeoisie, with the socio-economic upheavals, had become a capital and avid art buyer. This was also facilitated by the fact that the painting on canvas and forehead had won its entrance. In Holland, the Mayor went to the artist or art dealer and bought art for house needs. In Flanders, the princely or church instead commissioned the artist to perform a specific work, often monumental paintings, the contents of which were determined by the orderer. The seemingly worthy motif meal pieces should not be seen solely as a sign of prosperity. It could as anything else have a moral meaning and warn the viewer of too much indulging in the pleasures of the table. One can read in a series of symbols in Dutch still lifes, many of which were religious and in Heda’s image the bread and wine can all end on the last meal of Christ. The perishable motif was also almost always present in one way or another, for example, by dandestine or rotting fruits. Here, the completed meal with the started pie can be seen as a perishable motif. (This is usually called Vanitas motif). Soon the pie is cold, the wine sour and the bread dry.. Carlgren, Maria: Stilleben - significant things, Ur Bohuslän Konst. YEARBOOK 1996. The art at Bohusläns museum. Bohusläns homestead association and Bohusläns museum. Uddevalla 1996.