Pieter Claesz

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Pieter Claesz (* 1596/1597 in Berchem in Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands , † before January 1, 1661 in Haarlem , The Netherlands) was a Flemish-Dutch still life - painter of the Baroque and is considered one of the most important representatives.

life and work

Pieter Claesz: Still Life with Turkey Pie (1627), Rijksmuseum , Amsterdam

Pieter Claesz was born around 1596/1597 and came from Berchem near Antwerp. The date of his first marriage is unknown; his wife's name was probably Hillegont. A son from this marriage, Nicolaes Pietersz. Berchem also became a painter, but turned to Italian landscape painting and later worked in Amsterdam.

Claesz probably completed his apprenticeship in Antwerp. In 1621 he came to Haarlem, a prosperous city with a wealthy middle class striving for art. This year begins the series of his dated and signed works, which all in all clearly show a stylistic development, but his subjects are limited exclusively to the banketje , the theme of the table. The catalog raisonné includes around 250 paintings. The earliest paintings are still similar to still lifes by the Antwerp painters Clara Peeters and Osias Beert ; He presumably also knew the still life painters Nicolaes Gillis , Floris van Dyck and Floris van Schooten from Haarlem . It was not until 1634 that Pieter Claesz was found to be a member of the Haarlem St Lukas Guild , in which the painters were united. He signed a second marriage in 1635. His artistic success was enormous. No other painter has so many pictures in the Haarlem inventory of the 17th century.

His pictorial constructions, viewed as novel, made him one of the most innovative still life painters, so that in 1628 Samuel Ampzing also highlighted him in his prize poem on the city of Haarlem. He lightened the previously conventionally dark background in his pictures from around 1627 and soon afterwards he followed the general tendency of Dutch painting to monochrome , which - not only in the monochrome Haarlem still life painting - a palette of muted, gray, brown and ocher tinted colors preferred. Pieter Claesz did not experience serious competition in Haarlem until 1628 with his peer Willem Claesz Heda , who was strongly oriented towards Pieter Claesz and followed him closely in all innovations. In the 1640s, the “baroque” elements of his painting increased: the arrangement of the motifs became more theatrical, the colors enriched again, the light accents became more effective and the vessels depicted more splendid. Haarlem's economic decline around 1640 also impaired the productivity of the painter in the last decades of his life.

The painter's canon of motifs has seen little change in the course of his work: the tableware and dishes selected tend to stand out from the everyday and do not reflect the everyday dining table. Ceramic and metal vessels give the opportunity to create virtuoso material effects; Objects protruding or hanging down over the front edge of the table create near-sightedness, a table edge leading into the background of spatial depth. Vanitas elements in many individual motifs cannot be overlooked.

Works

literature

  • Pieter Claesz - Still Life . Exhibition catalog Kunsthaus Zürich 2005. ISBN 3-7630-2450-6 .
  • Martina Brunner-Bulst: Pieter Claesz - the main master of the Haarlem still life in the 17th century: critical oeuvre catalog . Lingen: Luca, 2004. ISBN 3-923641-22-2 .
  • General Artist Lexicon, Vol. 19, 1998, p. 353.

Web links

Commons : Pieter Claesz  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Remarks

  1. ↑ As Irene van Thiel has proven; the identification with a Pieter Claesz from Steinfurt in Germany turned out to be wrong, since he had already died in 1639; see. AK Zurich 2005, p. 16
  2. ↑ Martina Brunner-Bulst: Pieter Claesz - the main master of the Haarlem still life in the 17th century: critical oeuvre catalog . Lingen 2004.
personal data
SURNAME Claesz, Pieter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Claesz., Pieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch painter
DATE OF BIRTH around 1597
PLACE OF BIRTH Berchem near Antwerp , Spanish Netherlands
DATE OF DEATH around 1661
Place of death Haarlem , the Netherlands