Forest still life

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Still life with insects and amphibians (Otto Marseus van Schrieck)
Still life with insects and amphibians
Otto Marseus van Schrieck , 1662
Oil on canvas
50.7 × 68.5 cm
Duke Anton Ulrich Museum , Braunschweig

The forest still life or forest floor piece is a special form of still life painting in 17th century Holland. Otto Marseus van Schrieck is the main representative of this painting .

Pictorial objects and interpretation

Insights into biotopes with wild flowers, various plants and small animals such as lizards, frogs and insects are shown. Often it is the vegetation (and fauna) of the forest floor or boggy rural area. In spite of the lifelike observation, Sybille Ebert-Schifferer sees the essential task of these paintings in the visualization of moral processes - for example as a visualization of the "struggle for survival" . Norbert Schneider takes a similar interpretation and interprets these paintings as "scene [...], arena for the struggle between conflicting metaphysical principles, of good and evil" . The individual animals and plants have positive and negative properties according to Christian symbolism .

Artist

It is not certain where exactly the roots of the forest still life lie. However, there are clues in flower painting around the middle of the 17th century. By Jan Davidsz. de Heem are known paintings in which he combined a bouquet of flowers with a bird's nest or depicted his flower and fruit ensembles with animals on a forest floor. Otto Marseus van Schrieck is considered to be the main representative of the forest still life . Curt Habicht was the first to notice the forest still lifes, which in the canon of still life painting are quite idiosyncratic. He concluded that a “dreamer of Dutch painting” was the author of these paintings. However, the painter, who was born in Nijmegen , was no stranger to the field of still life with flowers, which is evidenced by the painting Flower Vase with Butterflies in the Palazzo Pitti . After his return from Italy, Marseus van Schrieck set off a real fashion for forest still life that lasted for almost two decades. Possibly he received the essential impulse for his painting on his 9-year-long journey through Italy. a. stayed in Rome and Florence . Based in Amsterdam from 1657, Marseus van Schrieck was fully committed to observing the animals and plants of the forest and the rural surroundings that existed on the ground, which he nicknamed the schildersbent (“Malerbande”, the association of Dutch painters in Rome) "Snuffelaer" (Eng. Sniffer) brought in. For this purpose, the artist created his “Waterrijck” (dt. Water kingdom) near Diemen - a boggy biotope in which he cultivated plants and raised insects for research purposes. His observations and studies were the model for his still lifes with mushrooms and the pieces of forest floor with scrub, roots, wild plants, insects and reptiles, which are kept in mysterious light or dark. Despite the artificiality of the scenery, the viewer has the feeling - not least because of the merging of landscape and object study - that they have left the obviously arranged sphere of still life painting. Otto Marseus van Schrieck's type of forest still life was continued by his students Matthias Withoos and Elias van den Broeck, although the landscape aspect - also with a view of the sky - always gained in importance. The influence of Marseus van Schrieck is also in the works of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Abraham Mignon and Rachel Ruysch noticeably. In Italy, Paolo Porpora, who was also an excellent flower painter, painted pieces of forest floor in the manner of the Dutch with a fictitious biotope and mutually threatening animals, which there became known as sottobosco (Italian for undergrowth ).

literature

reference books

  • Hermain Bazin & Horst Gerson & Rolf Linnenkamp u. a .: Kinderl's painting lexicon . Kindler, Zurich 1985, pp. 282-286 (Volume 11).
  • General artist lexicon (AKL). The visual artists of all times and peoples. KG Saur, Munich and Leipzig 1991ff., ISBN 3-598-22740-X .
  • Walther Bernt: The Dutch Painters of the 17th Century. 800 artists with 1470 illus. 3 vol. Münchner Verlag, Munich 19XX.
  • Erika Gemar-Költzsch: Dutch still life painter in the 17th century. Luca-Verlag, Lingen 1995, ISBN 3-923641-41-9 .
  • Fred G. Meijer & Adriaan van der Willigen: A dictionary of Dutch and Flemish still-life painters working in oils. 1525-1725. Primavera Press, Leiden 2003, ISBN 90-74310-85-0 .
  • Wolf Stadler u. a .: Lexicon of Art. Painting, architecture, sculpture. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, pp. 167-176 (volume 11).
  • Gerhard Strauss & Harald Olbrich: Lexicon of Art. Architecture, fine arts, applied arts, industrial design, art theory. Seemann, Leipzig 1994, pp. 64-67 (volume 7).
  • Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Leipzig 1907 to 1950.
  • Hans Vollmer: General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century added . Leipzig 1953 to 1962

Monographs and exhibition catalogs

  • Ingvar Bergström: Dutch still-life painting in the seventeenth century . Translated from the Swedish by Christina Hedström and Gerald Taylor. Faber & Faber, London 1956.
  • Sybille Ebert-Schifferer : The history of still life , Hirmer Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7774-7890-3 .
  • Claus Grimm : Still life. The Italian, Spanish and French masters . Belser, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-7630-2303-8 ; New edition 2001, 2010 ISBN 978-3-7630-2562-6
  • Claus Grimm : Still life. The Dutch and German masters . Belser, Stuttgart / Zurich 1988 ISBN 3-7630-1945-6 ; New edition 2001, 2010 ISBN 978-3-7630-2562-6
  • Gerhard Langemeyer & Hans-Albert Peeters (eds.): Still life in Europe. (Aust.kat .: Westphalian State Museum for Art and Cultural History Münster & State Art Hall Baden-Baden 1980). Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe, Münster 1979.
  • Norbert Schneider: Still life. Reality and symbolism of things; the still life painting of the early modern period. Taschen, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-8228-0398-7 .
  • Sam Segal: Jan Davidsz. de Heem en zijn kring. (Aust.cat .: Utrecht & Braunschweig 1991). SDU Publ., Utrecht 1991, ISBN 90-12-06661-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Sybille Ebert-Schifferer: The story of the still life. (1998), p. 115.
  2. ↑ Norbert Schneider: Still life. (1989), p. 198.
  3. ↑ Norbert Schneider: Still life. (1989), pp. 195ff.
  4. ↑ VC Habicht: A forgotten dreamer of Dutch painting. In: Oud Holland. No. 41, 1923/24, pp. 33-37.
  5. ↑ For the phases of his work and for further biographical facts see: Otto Marseus van Schrieck  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the database of the RKD.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.rkd.nl  
  6. ↑ Fred G. Meijer & Adriaan van der Willigen: A dictionary of Dutch and Flemish still-life painters working in oils. (2003), p. 139.
  7. ↑ About Matthias Withoos  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the database of the RKD.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.rkd.nl  
  8. ↑ About Elias van den Broeck  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the database of the RKD.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.rkd.nl  
  9. ↑ About Paolo Porpora  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the database of the RKD.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.rkd.nl  
  10. ↑ Sybille Ebert-Schifferer: The story of the still life. (1998), p. 198.