Vanitas Still Life

c. 1650

François van Daellen

Artist, active c. 1636 - c. 1651

A human skull, a large bone, books, papers, and a snuffed out, smoking candle are arranged on a marble tabletop near an open window in a darkened room in this vertical still life painting. The color palette is dominated by muted gray, slate blue, ivory white, and tawny brown. Near the bottom center of the composition, the skull faces our left in profile and rests on two small, leather-bound books and papers with illegible black printing. The large bone, a thighbone, is propped up behind the skull on a taller book at the back of the skull. More books, papers, and a box are piled to the right. A brass candlestick with a flat, shallow, dish-like base rests on the box along the right side of the composition, above the skull. The end of the candlewick glows red and a wisp of smoke wafts up. The brick red of the marble tabletop is veined with gray and white, and black fabric drapes down off the right side of the table. The objects fill the lower half of the composition and are lit by light coming in through a window to our left. The wooden window frame swings inward, into the room, and has small, leaded panes. The background is deep in black shadow.

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This delicately rendered painting is one of the finest known works by the Dutch painter François van Daellen. As the Gallery’s painting shows, this specialist in still-life painting possessed a refined manner that allowed him to masterfully imitate the range of textures in the combinations of objects found in such subjects. In the Gallery’s example, which pictures a large skull and femur (thigh bone) atop a scattered assemblage of books and manuscripts, he ably captures bone’s smoothness, paper’s brittleness, and even the ethereal quality of smoke that wafts from the tip of an extinguished candle.

Skulls, bones, and snuffed-out candles often appear in vanitas still lifes, which were designed to convey moralizing messages about the passage of time and the ephemerality of life. Books, indications of intellectual pursuits, are also common elements in vanitas still lifes and may suggest that scholarly and creative achievements last beyond the short span of human life. However, they may also suggest how fugitive and vain man’s accomplishments are in the face of death. As with many objects in Dutch still lifes, books did not necessarily have a single symbolic meaning.

Although Van Daellen painted this work in The Hague, one can easily imagine that Vanitas Still Life belonged to a scholar, perhaps even in Leiden, and that it hung in his study. The illusionistic archway Van Daellen used to frame the work lends the image a certain feeling of intimacy, as, too, does the painting’s small size—strong indications that this work was created for private contemplation and reflection.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 50-C


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Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Private collection, United States; (sale, Bonhams, New York, 6 November 2013, no. 15, as Attributed to Frans van Dalen); (Jack Kilgore & Co., Inc., New York); purchased 20 May 2014 by NGA.

Associated Names

Inscriptions

lower left: F.V. Daellen

Wikidata ID

Q20177362


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