Just in time for Thanksgiving, we take a look at this sumptuous feast by one of the stars of still-life painting, Pieter Claesz. We’ll find out three hints that tell us who might have owned this fabulous artwork and the amazing connection between the Dutch and one of your favorite ballpark treats!
If you want to follow along, you can find it here on the Gallery’s site.
SHOW NOTES (TRANSCRIPT BELOW)
“A Long Look” themes are “Easy” by Ron Gelinas https://youtu.be/2QGe6skVzSs and “At the Cafe with You” by Onion All Stars https://pixabay.com/users/onion_all_stars-33331904/
Episode music
“Violin Concerto in F major, RV 293 ‘Autumn’ – III Allegro” composed by Antonio Vivaldi. Performed by John Harrison. Courtesy of musopen.org https://musopen.org/music/14910-the-four-seasons-op-8/
“Meadow Waltz” by Keys of Moon Music
“Take Me Out to the Ballgame” performed by Kevin MacLeod
https://www.incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100313
Artwork information
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.132271.html
Artist information
https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.18426.html
“Pieter Claesz : Master of Haarlem Still Life” by P. Biesboer, Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2004.
History of still life
https://mymodernmet.com/what-is-still-life-painting-definition/
“The Dutch Gamepiece” by Scott A. Sullivan
Dutch cuisine
“The Sensible Cook : Dutch Foodways in the Old and the New World” by Peter G. Rose. 1st ed. Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1989.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to A Long Look! I’m your host, Karen Jackson
Did you know most people spend only a few seconds looking at works of art? But what happens if you slow down and take a long look? Join me while I take you thru the experience of what I see and discover while looking at art for minutes instead of seconds. Then I’ll share the history, mystery, or controversy behind it!
Ready? Then let’s head to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC
[MUSIC]
Today I’m looking at Still Life with Peacock Pie by Pieter Claesz. If you want to follow along, you can find it at alonglookpodcast.com/peacock. When you get there, just click on the image to zoom in and pan around!
So what do you first notice?
A peacock with a pink flower in its beak sitting on a dining table! Actually we can’t see its legs, it looks like it’s sitting inside a caramel-brown drum-shaped object. I’m guessing it’s the pie in the title? The crust has a fluted top edge and sits on a silver platter. It and the peacock sit at the back of the table, filling the upper right corner of this very large oil painting that’s about 4 ft wide by 3 ft tall. The bird faces our left with its tall thin head and neck flecked with blue balancing on the edge of the pie. Its round body is covered with steel grey, tan and tawny brown feathers that curve back towards the tail. Those auburn tail feathers–called a train–are folded closed like a fan and dotted with blue-black circles rimmed in light grey called eyes.
The bird gazes out over an elegant feast on a long table filling the lower half of the scene. The table is bathed in soft, clear light from the left and its right half is draped with a brick-red tablecloth covered with a dark red leafy pattern. A white linen cloth with deep folds is layered over the left half.
Chinese porcelain bowls painted with delicate blue patterns and gleaming pewter plates filled with goodies spread across the table. Looking from right to left, a wide bowl between us and the peacock overflows with yellow apples and apricots tinged with red with a sprig of leaves tucked among them. A couple have even spilled out onto the table.
Next is a plate of what look like cookies. Some are finger-length, others are round little balls or disks and they’re cinnamon red, white with powdered sugar, or just butter yellow. A mound of salt sits in a tall, gold saltcellar just behind them.
In the center of the table, a golden-brown roasted pheasant lies on a platter, with its head tucked along its body and its claws hanging off the right side. The blade of an ivory-handled carving knife rests on the lip of the plate, pointing towards the bird.
Behind the pheasant is a bowl of green grapes and in front of it, is a plate with a couple of lemons, one of which is partly peeled. The plate sticks over the front edge of the table towards us and that peeled end kind of spirals off it.
On the far left, another plate is almost hidden by a white linen napkin crumpled into deep folds like someone just tossed it there. A glass has been knocked over onto it next to a tube-shaped black and brown knife case.
Finally, in the upper left corner, sits a wide-mouthed olive-green glass filled with a clear liquid next to a pewter pitcher with a lid and long spout. The unusual thing about those glasses is they’re studded with small knobs around their thick bases.
Round toasty-brown loaves of bread along with a few hazelnuts, walnuts and dried fruit fill in the open areas among the plates and bowls.
The longer I looked the more detail I began to see in the reflections of the glass and pitcher. For example, the light shining through the glass casts a green shadow on the white tablecloth and you can actually see the outline of a window frame in it. And on the curves of the pitcher are these warped reflections of the glass, that roast pheasant, and three windows where that wonderful light is coming from.
That light creates soft shadows accentuating the folds and creases of the tablecloth and napkin and leaves dramatic shadows under all the objects spread across the table.
All this is set against a chocolate-brown background filling the top half.
The painting hangs low and everything is about life-sized, so it’s almost like we’ve just walked up to this feast. But Claesz has created a kind of a mystery because some of the bread’s been eaten and the overturned glass and bunched up napkin makes you wonder, are we being invited to join in or did the party just end suddenly?
This painting is seriously gorgeous because of the glowing color, attention to details, and the mix of textures, like the velvety piecrust, crusty bread, and glistening skin of the pheasant. But still lifes always seemed like an odd thing to paint. I mean, why would an artist spread out a bunch of plates, bowls and food and paint it? And what’s with that peacock??
[MUSIC]
As you may have guessed, the poor bird isn’t really sitting. It’s been cooked into the pie and its head, neck, and body are placed on top as decoration.
Still lifes have been around since the ancient Greeks and Romans. But starting in the 1500s, artists in the Netherlands and Flanders turned them into an artform. By 1627, when Claesz painted this in the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands, the country had become wealthy and powerful through its wide-reaching global trade. The people were mostly Protestant and the government was run by wealthy businessmen, not a king or queen.
What this means is artists didn’t have churches or royal courts commissioning artworks anymore and had to find a new product to offer. Merchants were now the ruling class and wanted to emulate the aristocrats and royalty who came before them. So, since those folks had been into art, they would be too!
Artists came up with the idea of showing off all the great stuff people could now have because they were so successful.
Paintings like this called banquet pieces didn’t show an actual meal but were meant to celebrate that success by featuring luxury items from all over the world like the Chinese bowls, and that mound of salt. The lemons, cinnamon and sugar for the cookies all came from places the Dutch did business like Indonesia, the Mediterranean and Brazil.
Still lifes were made for the market, anybody could buy them. But just like today, some people wanted to show off by commissioning a custom painting.
According the Gallery, this painting was probably commissioned by one of these wealthy folks and here’s how they know:
No. 1. Game birds like the pheasant and peacock could only be hunted by wealthy landowners with large estates
No 2. The size of the painting. Only a rich person could afford something this big.
No. 3 The peacock pie was probably never even meant to be eaten, it was just another extravagance. Poor bird!!
[MUSIC]
Pieter Claesz was born in Flanders around 1596 and started his career in 1620. There’s not a whole lot we know about his training but looking at his work, art historians can tell he studied still lifes done by artists who came before him, like Osias Beert the Elder and Floris van Dyck. He was part of a wave of Flemish immigrants who moved to Haarlem and his incredible attention to detail and realistic style made him really popular among art collectors there.
He’s a master of creating those gleaming surfaces and textures and had a great eye for creating lavish arrangements. And people loved his trick of extending objects into our space to make us feel like we’re really standing there.
Oh and BTW, I found out the knobs on the glasses have a practical use. They helped drinkers keep a good grip so they didn’t drop the glass as they enjoyed more and more wine!
[MUSIC]
A big part of Dutch international trade was America. In the early 1600s–yup, years before the English–the Dutch colonized a big chunk of the east coast, from upstate NY all the way down through NJ to Del and spread into PA, CT and RI. And of course they brought their food with them. That food became a big part of our American diet. Things like doughnuts, crullers, pancakes, waffles, coleslaw–even those big pretzels you get at the ballpark all come from the Dutch!
OUTRO:
I hope you’ll try out a long look on your next museum visit! Just take a little time and let the art reveal itself.
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Thanks for joining me!