Tag: Dutch painting
Still life, still alive
‘Still life’ is a paradox. Can something that’s still or unmoving be alive, especially if it’s a dead creature or an inanimate object? The French equivalent, nature morte, is equally stark in its self-contradiction. But the term isn’t the only paradox. One of the reasons why the still life has had such a long history, […]
Vermeer regathered
We’re back in the Netherlands: the first time we’ve broken out of our bleak little island for over three years. It’s a relief to be in a country where most things seem to work, as they once did in Britain: railways and buses, information and advice services, health facilities, clean public spaces and much else. […]
Time and Johannes Vermeer
Today’s the last day of my imaginary return visit to the city of Delft. As always, it’s been a time of rest and contemplation among the canals and step-gabled houses facing them. And as usual I’ve been thinking about Delft’s most famous citizen, Johannes Vermeer, and his paintings – this time, the early works that […]
Carel Fabritius’s ‘A view of Delft’
You can take a train to Delft – or you could, in pre-Virus times – walk to the corner of Oude Langendijk and the Oosteinde in the city centre, look to the north-west, and see what the painter Carel Fabritius saw there on a bright summer’s day in 1652. A few things have changed, it’s […]
Anselm Kiefer and Rembrandt van Rijn
Visit the big retrospective of Anselm Kiefer in the Royal Academy and it’s unlikely that you’ll quickly forget it. Which is apt, because memory, personal and especially collective, is the big theme that runs through all his work since he began his career as an artist in 1969. For Kiefer memory is seldom direct or […]