Date : 1722
Material : Oil on canvas
| Item 13 on 16
European Painting
Painting (Still Life)
Area related
Neitherlands
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This lavish still life of fruit and flowers combines the lustrous realism of Dutch paintings of the 1600s with the bright colors and sinuous rhythms characteristic of the Rococo style of the 1700s. The effect is lush and extravagantly varied - Van Huysum deftly captured the translucence of over-ripe fruit, the weight of heavy blooms, the crisp surfaces of leaves, and the wiry tension of vines.
Van Huysum was secretive about his painting technique, because he feared that someone might imitate his methods supposedly different from those practised by early Dutch still-life painters. Now we know that his materials were not much different from those of his colleagues. He was one of the first in the Netherlands to use newly introduced some new pigments. But the real difference was in the change from a dark background to a lighter one. His transparent or translucent paints had a luminosity, that could not be obtained in any other way.
Jan van Huysum, the eldest son of Justus van Huysum the elder (1659-1716), also a flower painter. He is one of the most prominent of all Dutch flower painters. Jan and his youngest brothers, Justus the Younger, Jacob and Michiel van Huysum, all followed in their father's footsteps and became flower painters. Jan, however, was far more successful than his brothers.
He acquired enormous fame, selling his pictures for astronomically high prices to courts all over Europe. People were prepared to pay several thousand guilders for one of Van Huysum's still-life pieces. Among his customers were Louis XIV, Charles of Austria, the English Prime Minister and the Duke of Mecklenburgh. Van Huysum came to be known as the "Phoenix of Flower Painters".
His paintings after 1720 reveal a more exuberant style, marked by asymmetrical compositions against a much lighter background. He gave his paintings a certain exuberance and abundance by using light, pastel-like colours, striving for a primarily decorative effects.
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