I’ve been doing a little research into still life, primarily finding out what excites me about the genre. I think that along with a large proportion of those who studied art in secondary school I was slightly put off still life by endless rather dull arrangements of apples painted badly by distracted teenagers. I remember wondering what the point was when you could be painting the human form, and even Cezanne not inspiring any enthusiasm! Nowadays often it is the still lifes that make me want to rush home from an exhibition and get out my paints and so I’ve enjoyed picking a few to keep in mind as I continue my studies.
I looked first at the dutch masters for an earlier approach. Still lifes at this date (as with so much of their paintings) seem so dramatic and rich; you can almost reach out and taste the food on the tables and it all looks so wonderful! A real feast for the eyes, but not a style I would be tempted to emulate now. I think of still life now as celebrating the mundane, though perhaps that is unfair; what’s mundane has changed and many of the examples I’ve chosen are far from that anyway. Still, for me at least that celebration of the everyday and giving life to inanimate objects holds more excitement than those fantastically grand earlier works. I do love them still though, and there are plenty of elements that can be drawn from them such as colour and composition – in Still Life with the Drinking-Horn of the St. Sebastian Archers’ Guild, Lobster and Glasses, c.1653 (oil on canvas), Kalf, Willem (1619-93) the lobster is so wonderfully garish in its contrasting colour – to todays audience I think there is something comic about it sat amongst the muted tones of the rest of the painting, an absurd shiny red symbol of wealth. It’s lovely too to see how artists recycle subjects and rearrange still lifes such as in Willem Claesz Heda’s Banquet Piece with Mince Pie and Still Life with Ham. It somehow humanises the artist to picture him stood thinking about the composition and trying different arrangements over time as we all do.
I then looked at the more modern approaches to still life and picked a few artists that I find really inspiring, including Cezanne – so famed for those wonderful still lifes that I was blind to as a teenager! Two that I’ve saved to come back to for inspiration are Still Life with Open Drawer and Still life with apples and biscuits both of which have a lovely use of straight lines running through the backdrop to contrast with the spheres of the apples. I think I’m more drawn to the composition of still life with open drawer but the block colours and the depth given to the apples in still life with apples and biscuits make that my favourite of the two and especially good to keep in mind for trying to simplify my work while still retaining what I like about other peoples work.
Mary Fedden came up and I absolutely love these three: Still Life IV; On a Red Ground, Orange and Green Still Life and The Mincing Machine her. Her almost abstract still lifes take the subjects and flatten and simplify the elements painting them in a bright but restricted colour palette and with a focus on pattern which as we know I’m rather keen on! I’ve found through my research that I’m really drawn to limited colour palettes such as these – worth remembering to not feel I have to stay too close to what’s in front of me in terms of colour.
I always find myself inspired by the work of the Bloomsbury group and so looked to see Duncan Grant’s take on still life – as ever he did not dissappoint. Here are three I’d like to come back to: Lilies in a Jug, Still Life with Fruit and Coffee Pot, and Still Life with Cyclamen, two really lovely and very different floral works but it’s Still life with fruit and coffee pot that really excites me – what fantastic colour! This is exactly the sort of work that I love; for the paintwork, colours and use of pattern.
I also looked at Roger Fry’s work and saved Still Life with a Blue Bottle and Still Life of Fish to return to for inspiration. I haven’t painted fish yet and would love to give that a go – these are really lovely, though a smoother style than I would usually go for. The blue bottle I thought might be good to give me ideas for doing much simpler work that still has that playfulness and colour that I love.
Another fishy piece I loved was George Braque’s Fish; Les Poissons – much simpler than Fry’s still life of fish and in my eyes absolutely as gorgeous, it plays too with negative space which is something we’ve been asked to bear in mind. I also wanted to bookmark The Red Tablecloth; La Nappe Rouge for it’s use of shapes and pattern and again lovely playful use of colour.
The last two I wanted to save for later are by Anne Redpath: Still Life with Orange Chair and Round Table with Chinese teapot. Both interesting for their quite different use of colour but also just lovely compositions. Again the flattened perspective really appeals to me – distorting everything and creating quite a different image because of it.
Really what I’ve come out of all of this thinking is how much I want to get painting again which isn’t so much use in the drawing module! However it has also reignited my enthusiasm for still life and given me ideas of what to focus on for my upcoming projects.
Flora OCA drawing 1 