Research: Iconographic significance in still life

Dutch Still Life had a number of subgenre³ and if I’m correct, the Collier work above is of the type ‘Pronk’ — which is a delightful word. Paintings of this type focused on the trappings of wealth, rather than food items. In the above we see a number of musical instruments: wood winds, violins, a lute and maybe a cittern? The title of the piece calls out the written work on the left which looks like it is probably a collection of music. I see wine (sherry?), stone fruit, snuff boxes and grapes. When I was studying violin, my practice area looked nothing like this.

Collier is a bit on the nose in this painting. Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas is Latin for “vanity of vanities, everything is vanity” — an admonishment that life is empty. Reminds me of a joke between my mother, and aunts “He who dies with the most stuff wins”. Anyway — a touch of dark humour in my family.

I love reading about all the encoded messages in the paintings. How they may be focused either on the current material life, or hopes for the afterlife⁴, and how these then provide moralistic commentary. The idea that violins (or stringed instruments) are about enjoying the moment because tomorrow might bring disaster³ is deeply amusing to me. Leveraging my bibliography (at bottom of post) I see the following potential symbols in this work:

• Stringed instruments. Apparently their strings represent the possibly of disaster, via them snapping.³
• Glass of wine. A life of luxury
• Grapes. Christ’s blood (really?)
• Peach. Good health
• Skull. Mortality
• Flutes. Their phallic appearance was a warning against forbidden pleasures²

So, to summarize, I see the trappings of someone living a life of luxury. Some of these symbols are suggestions of good health (which usually comes with wealth, as it meant access to better diet, shelter and health care), alongside some heavy handed reminders of mortality and a general warning that “you can’t take it with you”. Also some random religious symbols. I love it. I love the idea of embedded narrative, and hidden meanings — do these particular ones resonate with me? No. However, it is incredibly fascinating. Reminds me I should read up on Victorian Floriography

Not that I see it in this painting, but snails apparently reference the virgin birth in Christian teachings². That is such a bizarre connection to make.

Exercise: Drawing in Paint

Did I misinterpret this exercise? I blended the Still Life exercises with this one, ensuring I did a variety of prep drawings, in various media. I also started every painting with a painted under-drawing.

For the floral exercise, I considered doing a pastel under painting. That might produce some interesting effects, as the oil paint and pastels blend. I didn’t get to doing this, however, so I should return later and see the result.

My intuition is that I’d need some mechanism of fixing the pastel down, so that the oil paint would have more than loose powder to attach to.

Exercise: Still life with Natural Objects

Coming off the colour mixing exercises in the prior project, my brain was apparently primed and ready to get into it with this study. Instead of using a wide variety of tubes, I decided to keep myself to “primaries” plus black and white. Cadmium Yellow, Quinacridone Magenta, Cobalt Blue. I did sneak in a bit of Cobalt Teal for planned greens.

Bringing in some Dutch symbolism, not that I was trying to come up with any over-arching theme — I was more enamoured with the colours of the subject matter — but I did want to echo some of the symbols:

• Citrus fruit as primary, a wish for good health
• The turnip. I didn’t have any brown bread or hard cheese to bring in those Calvinist work ethic vibes, but I did have turnips. A lowly vegetable, much maligned, but definitely calling into farm life.
• A bird’s skull. Actually a resin cast (I try to avoid arbitrary use of animal products). The skull brings in those mortality themes, but as a resin cast there is something of a play here even if I’m the only one who would have known. A little bit of life after death.
• A coffee mug in the background. No chalice, or wine glass, the coffee mug speaks to my daily work life in the office. The corporate grind.

I love the colour I achieved with the turnip. The oranges are a bit red but I’m happy with them. The bird skull could be knocked back a bit further and isn’t blue enough — the resin cast looks quite blue to my eye. the background mug could be erased, or worked better; either would be suitable. the lime looks flat, but I was having trouble getting the right tone for the shading. Instead of worrying, I simply moved on.

I spent a chunk of time thinking about line quality. Sharpness of line, and fuzziness, as I thought about whether I wanted focus on a component or not. I quite like the result here.

This took about two hours, and would probably have taken less time if I’d used a large brush for most of it. Instead I chose a quite small bristle brush, because apparently I like making things difficult for myself. I really need to learn to adjust which brushes I use throughout the process.

Looking at this painting, I was trying to figure out why the lime was bothering me. I think it is because of my brushwork. The bottom of the lime has a few straight brush strokes that left lines in the paint. Really harsh flattening lines. Compared to the more “tapping”-like brushwork, these feel really out of place. I should have smoothed them out, or treated this area the same as the rest of the lime.

Looking at the above photo in black & white, reinforces my view that the skull is too high value. I could re-work the values of the oranges to give them more roundness. The lime isn’t so bad from this view.

Exercise: Still Life with Flowers

I don’t normally have cut flowers, nor were any of my orchids in bloom. I could have painted from my garden, I suppose, but that would have been complicated. So I went and got some dahlias — which may have been a complicated choice.

I had set up the arrangement on top of a brown cloth. That was a mistake. it is just sort of there, and I don’t like it. Once the paint dries, I’ll think of what to do about it.

The flower was a lot of fun. I wanted three distinct areas: The shadowed underside, where the petals had wilted and folded under, the middle area where petals were transition into wilted, and the yellow center where petals were unfolding. I think I accomplished that well. I also really like the glass bottle — it has a sense of transparency and solidity, while also being flattened. Like in the first still life, I was trying to pay attention to line quality, particularly in the back row of petals. I wanted them to ‘fall backwards’ to some extent, and tried by letting them blend with the back drop.

Going into this exercise, I wanted to let myself be more abstract in my rendering. I have a strong pull towards realistic painting, but I knew that with a flower I would likely just frustrate myself. I spent time looking at how other artists painted similar subject matter, and how they used abstraction in their work. I’ve captured that at the bottom of the post.

Dissatisfactions

This painting is quite washed out. Its a bit dreamy and ephemeral, but doesn’t sit too well with me. The brown ground, of course, is just a waste of pigment and needs to be redone. But in general there is something a bit off and I think it is values.

I was going over Paul Foxton’s blog⁶, and his most recent post related to a floral painting he was unhappy with at first attempt. He shows a technique where he paints in the entire value structure in large blocks monochrome — turning everything into volumes of values. I really think that would have helped me here, and if/when I redo this exercise I’ll will attempt to include that as my first step. I think I was too eager to get to the colours in this piece (or all pieces really).

Exercise: Still Life with man-made objects

I’ll do this one in follow up. I really enjoyed these still life exercises, and figure I should complete them all.

Abstraction Research

I spent some time looking at how artists have brought abstraction into their process for painting flowers. I consolidated that in a separate post here

Bibliography

¹ Still Life | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (s.d.) At: https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/learn/schools/teachers-guides/still-life (Accessed 13/08/2022).

² A Symbolism Guide To the Spooky World of Dutch Still-Lives (s.d.) At: http://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/a-symbolism-guide-to-the-spooky-world-of-dutch-still-lives (Accessed 13/08/2022).

³ Materialism & Symbolism in Dutch Golden Age Still Lifes (2021) At: http://patinaturstudio.dk/materialism-symbolism-in-still-lifes/ (Accessed 13/08/2022).

⁴ Meleca, A. and M.A. (s.d.) Vanitas – Definition, Artwork and History of the Vanitas Genre – Artlex. At: https://www.artlex.com/genres/vanitas/ (Accessed 13/08/2022).

⁵ Tate (s.d.) Edward Collier active 1662–1708. At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/edward-collier-100 (Accessed 13/08/2022).

⁶ Foxton, P. (2022) Why this painting failed – and how I fixed it. At: https://www.learning-to-see.co.uk/why-this-painting-failed-and-how-i-fixed-it (Accessed 18/08/2022).