Still Life with a Glass and Oysters

Image Source

Still Life with a Glass and Oysters
Artist:Jan Davidsz de Heem (Dutch, Utrecht 1606–1683/84 Antwerp)
Date: ca. 1640
Medium: Oil on wood

After a few days of sunshine, we woke up to a rainy and windy New York city this Sunday. In other words, the perfect opportunity to visit the Met! After a coffee and some sweets, my partner and I headed to the museum. Today I'd like to share one of my favorite paintings - and a little about a book inspired by this wonderful piece.

Jan Davidsz de Heem painted Still Life with a Glass and Oysters in 1640 while living in his native Utrecht. Still Life with Glass and Oysters is a small painting, but it is mesmerizing. An exquisite study of both light and texture, the piece is sensual and engaging. A setting of oysters, lemon, grapes, and a small glass sit atop a silky green table cloth. The lemon rinds glisten under soft lighting that emanates from the upper right corner of the canvas. The painting is an homage to the senses, a delicate and emotive rendering of objects and the visual, oral, and tactile pleasure they yield.

Mark Doty wrote Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy in 2002. It is a memoir of sorts, the story of the author's life - the events and relationships that shaped him- all told through the lens of his engagement with this small painting that hangs in the Met. Doty explores the beauty of life's simplest and greatest joys and pleasures and the bounds of grief with insight and balance that matches the depth and delicacy of De Heem's lemon rinds. It is a heartbreaking and sensitive. Doty's gorgeous prose engages in the same play of light and texture as De Heem's still life. Just as the painting, Doty's texts requires multiple readings. Each reading is more affecting than the last. Below I'd like to share one quote from Doty's text, in which he describes beauty and the artist's relationship with beauty, especially in moments of darkness.

“I know that all of this might be taken as precious, a hymn to so much useless beauty, in an hour when the notion of beauty is suspect—when it seems to suggest a falsely bright view of the world, or a narrow set of aesthetic principles related to the values of those in power, an oppressive construction…It is an art that points to meaning through wordlessness, that points to timelessness through things permanently caught in time. That points to immensity through intimacy. An art of modest claims that seems perennial, inexhaustible.” Text Source

Luckily, you don't have to live in New York to visit the Met! High resolution images and full catalogue entries are available to nearly all works in the collection on the Met's website. I'd love to hear what your favorite piece is and why it speaks to you!