We look across the corner of a wooden table piled with books, playing cards, a pipe, matches, and a covered vessel out into an alley between two tall buildings in this square woodcut print. The scene is printed with black ink on cream-white paper. The corner of the table juts toward us, and we realize that the surface of the table seamlessly becomes the floor of the alleyway beyond. Closest to us, on the table, a pipe and two matches rest in a shallow bowl. A five of spades is face up on the pile of cards to our left, and the pipe, bowl, and cards are reflected in a vessel behind them. The vessel has ribbing or ridges around the sides and along the conical cover, radiating out from a ball-shaped handle. A box of matches sits next to the bowl, to our right. Four books are stacked in a pile to our right, against three taller standing books. Six more books, standing with their spine facing inward, are to our left. The farthest books on both sides rest against the side of the buildings that line the alley, as if the buildings were bookends. The buildings each have three or four stories lined with rectangular windows, some with shutters. There are a few retracted awnings, and lines of white laundry are strung between the buildings in the distance. The roofline of the building to our left nearly reaches the top edge of the paper, and the roof of the building to our right is cut off by that edge. People, tables, and goods, tiny in scale, line the shop openings along the bottom floors of the buildings. The numbers “3-‘37” appear in white against black in the lower left corner of the printed image, and the blocky letters “MCE” appear to the lower right. Pencil inscriptions in the margin beneath each corner of the printed image cannot be made out.
M.C. Escher, Still Life and Street, 1937, woodcut, Cornelius Van S. Roosevelt Collection, 1974.28.5

Still Life

Artists have long used everyday or natural objects—from a silver platter to a blooming bouquet—to create still lifes. Through these works, they experiment with new styles and convey symbolic meanings.

  • An instrument, forms possibly representing grapes, wood grain, and other shapes are painted with hard-edged black outlines filled in with white, gray, red, or yellow in this abstracted, vertical still life painting. A fragmented guitar takes up most of the middle of the composition. Gray, black, and red areas of wood grain are spaced around and across the painting. Stylized molding stretches behind the objects, and white balls with black dashes, suggesting glints, could be grapes near the lower right.
  • Geometric shapes and pieces of fruit in vivid yellow, red, midnight blue, cool green, and orange form a rough pyramid on a mottled brown surface or table in this vertical, abstracted still life painting. The objects and surrounding patterns are painted with visible, textured brushstrokes. The tallest shape is a crimson-red cylinder in the center. In front of and just to the right of the red cylinder is a corn-yellow cylinder topped with a semi-circle resembling a mushroom cap. Next is a red orb, perhaps an apple, sitting in a half-moon shaped, blue and black dish or cup with a yellow footed stem. Balancing out these descending forms are two half-circles that flare to our left from behind the cylinders. The upper disk has a yellow fish-scale pattern against teal blue, and the other lightens from lime green at the center to lemon yellow at the perimeter. Four pieces of fruit are in front of the pyramid. From left to right are a half an oval melon with a dark blue skin and pink flesh, a cluster of acid-green grapes, a pear painted in cobalt blue and bright yellow, and an orange piece of fruit. Slices of pattern cut diagonally across the background and overlap. At the front, turquoise flowers with yellow centers are arranged against coral pink and black lines. Other slices have stripes, polka dots, or more flowers in tones of bright yellow, cranberry red, carnation pink, and sky blue. A vertical band up the right edge of the composition has pale blue dots against celestial blue.
  • Abstracted objects, including a guitar, vase, papers, and playing cards, are gathered on a tabletop in this horizontal still life painting. The objects are made up of areas of mostly flat color and many are outlined in black, creating the impression that the some shapes are two-dimensional and assembled almost like a collage. The brown table has an oval top and a curving pedestal foot. At the center of the jumble on the tabletop, a guitar lies on its side with the neck facing us and reaching to our right. Beneath the black fretboard and neck, the curving form of the guitar is painted tomato red. The upper half is represented by a squared-off brown form. The guitar seems to rest atop or in front of an array of stacked shapes, like splayed pieces of paper, in white, lavender purple, and pale blue. A curving form painted in turquoise to our left seems to be a vase holding a spray of three flowers. The vase is shown against a white square painted with horizontal black lines, like sheet music. A dark gray form at the middle of the table, beneath the guitar, could be the silhouette of a bird facing our left. Just to the right of the bird, a pair of playing cards lie on a blue area. Painted in turquoise against gray, one card has six dots and the other one club. A chair with a curved, arching top and a gray upholstered seat is pulled up to the table to our right. The front left leg is light gray with turned knobs near the foot and halfway up the leg; the right leg is painted black, as if in shadow. Panels of pale tan suggest wainscotting behind the table beneath a pale gray wall across the background. The overall impression of the painting is fragmented as even single objects seem to be broken up into planes and areas of color. The artist signed and underlined his name with red paint in the lower left corner: “Picasso.”
  • This abstract, horizontal painting is created with broad, visible strokes in areas of saffron orange, harvest yellow, carnation pink, violet, tomato red, cobalt and ultramarine blue, and shades of icy, seafoam, and pine green. Many of the colors are layered like strata in a canyon. A few objects are more recognizable, like a loosely painted pink kettle with royal-blue highlights at the back next to a bottle outlined with blue against the background. A spring-green teapot with a peach lid is to our right. The surface, presumably the table, is painted in tones of marigold and pumpkin orange. The left two-thirds of the background is painted with strokes of lavender-blue and mauve-pink streaked with cream white. The rightmost third is lapis blue. The artist signed the painting in the upper right corner, “Henri Matisse.”
  • We look across the corner of a wooden table piled with books, playing cards, a pipe, matches, and a covered vessel out into an alley between two tall buildings in this square woodcut print. The scene is printed with black ink on cream-white paper. The corner of the table juts toward us, and we realize that the surface of the table seamlessly becomes the floor of the alleyway beyond. Closest to us, on the table, a pipe and two matches rest in a shallow bowl. A five of spades is face up on the pile of cards to our left, and the pipe, bowl, and cards are reflected in a vessel behind them. The vessel has ribbing or ridges around the sides and along the conical cover, radiating out from a ball-shaped handle. A box of matches sits next to the bowl, to our right. Four books are stacked in a pile to our right, against three taller standing books. Six more books, standing with their spine facing inward, are to our left. The farthest books on both sides rest against the side of the buildings that line the alley, as if the buildings were bookends. The buildings each have three or four stories lined with rectangular windows, some with shutters. There are a few retracted awnings, and lines of white laundry are strung between the buildings in the distance. The roofline of the building to our left nearly reaches the top edge of the paper, and the roof of the building to our right is cut off by that edge. People, tables, and goods, tiny in scale, line the shop openings along the bottom floors of the buildings. The numbers “3-‘37” appear in white against black in the lower left corner of the printed image, and the blocky letters “MCE” appear to the lower right. Pencil inscriptions in the margin beneath each corner of the printed image cannot be made out.
  • Nine oranges and lemons sit in a shallow basket with dark green, spiky branches behind and a pair of cobalt-blue gloves in front in this horizontal still life painting. The scene is painted with long, loose brushstrokes, which are visible throughout. The muted orange and golden yellow fruit are outlined with blue, as is the woven basket in which they sit. The two cypress branches behind and to either side of the basket are painted with sky blue along the stems and long, bristly needles. The gloves sit one atop the other near the lower right corner, and the top glove has three brown stripes down the back. The surface beneath the still life is sand brown, and the pale turquoise background takes up the top third of the composition. The artist signed and dated this with the location in the lower right corner, “Vincent Arles 89.”
  • Two bottles, a carafe, drinking glass, plate, knife, and loaf of bread are arranged on a table covered with a white cloth in this horizontal still-life painting. The narrow table angles from the lower left toward the wall to our right. The bright white cloth is slightly rumpled, and the shadows are painted with silvery gray. A clear glass, square-bodied bottle holding amber-brown liquid extends off the left edge of the canvas. Next to it, a long-necked carafe filled halfway with clear liquid has a low, wide belly. The black handle of the knife angles toward us in the lower left corner, the blade pointing back to the other objects on the table. Just beyond the knife is a glass with a low stem and tall bowl, a silver-colored plate holding yellow material, perhaps bread or butter, and a green bottle filled about a third of the way with dark liquid, presumably red wine. The long loaf of bread is at the far side of the table. One round, crusty end of the loaf has been broken off and lies nearby. The room behind the table has nickel-gray walls on either side of a brown rectangle, perhaps a door or panel. A dark brown square along the top of the composition is hard to interpret. The objects and setting are loosely painted so some details are indistinct.
  • A white rose, grapes and other fruit, a squat gourd, a bottle, and a glass are arranged across a dark wood table partly covered by a white cloth in this horizontal still life painting. The table and its objects fill the width and most of the height of this composition, and are set against a sable-brown background. The rose, bowl, cluster of green grapes, and a peach sit on the shimmering, bright white cloth, which is draped over the left half of the table. The shallow, straw-yellow bowl holds a pile of canary-yellow pears and a few peaches nestled among green leaves. Another peach and a second piece of fruit sit in front of it, partly obscured by the grapes that lie near the front edge of the table. Continuing to the right, the pumpkin-shaped gourd, roughly the size of the bowl and its fruit, is painted with streaks and daubs of lemon yellow and light and forest green. It sits on a gleaming silver tray. A tapered, earth-brown bottle and a small glass with a long stem stand behind the gourd. On the front face of the table, near the lower right corner, a keyhole is outlined with gold, and the top of one table leg is also gold. The objects are loosely painted with some visible brushstrokes, especially in the fruit in the bowl and the gourd. The artist signed the lower right, "Manet."
  • We look down onto nine pieces of fruit, a pitcher, a goblet, and a dish arranged on a rustic wood table in front of a floral curtain in this nearly square, loosely painted still life. The table extends off the left edge of the composition and the back, right corner of the table just touches the right edge of the canvas. At the center of the composition, five pieces of marigold-orange fruit with yellow highlights and scarlet-red shading are piled in the dish. The side of the dish to our right is slightly tipped up so the fruit settles near the rim to our left. The dish is painted with loose strokes of sky blue, shell pink, pale yellow, and parchment white. Three more pieces of fruit, including a lemon, sit to our left of the dish and one more piece of fruit sits near the back corner of the table, behind the dish, to our right. Immediately behind the dish is a stemmed glass with a tall, rounded bowl. To our left, between the fruit on the table and in the platter, is a tall, angular, tapering pitcher. The pitcher is painted with emerald and moss-green leaves against a background painted with strokes of light peach, blush pink, slate blue, and one wide stroke of amber orange. The wooden table is peanut brown streaked with strokes of apricot orange and pale sage green. One drawer at the front has a round, wooden pull. There seem to be at least two panels of curtains hanging behind the table. Down the center of the background is a panel of coral peach and saffron orange with a floral pattern painted in wheat brown and denim blue. To our right, the panel is streaked with vertical strokes of teal, midnight, and navy blue. The area to our left, behind the table, could be the panel of a door, painted with pale turquoise. The fruit, dish, vessels, table, curtain, and door are all outlined with cobalt blue.
  • About a dozen ruby-red and bright pink peonies in a gold and green vase sit on a rumpled cloth in this loosely painted, horizontal still life. The flowers, cloth, and background are painted with visible brushstrokes, making many of the details indistinct. Nestled among moss-green leaves, most of the flowers are red but three pink peonies are interspersed in the bouquet, to our right. One additional red peony lies on the table, near the lower left corner of the painting. The narrow vase holding the flowers has emerald-green ovals against a celery-green background. The fabric bunched on the table is loosely painted in strokes of pumpkin orange, indigo blue, and asparagus green, that together suggest a geometric pattern. The wall behind the bouquet is streaked with sky blue and parchment white, and two pictures hanging one over the other, to our right, are cut off by the top and right edges of the composition. The top picture has a wide, cream-white mat and shows a tan house with a charcoal-gray roof against a blue sky. The bottom picture shows a ballerina wearing a knee-length tutu bent forward over her knees, presumably tying a slipper. The artist inscribed, dated, and signed the work in pine-green paint in the upper left corner, “à M. Théodore Gad son ami” and, underneath, “P Gauguin 84.”
  • An ivory-white, lidded jug, a long, white clay pipe, an open paper packet of tobacco, and a burning ember in a clay pot are clustered together at the front corner of a wooden table in this vertical still life painting. Against a deep, sage-green background, the table extends off the left edge, and the front corner almost brushes the right edge of the composition. The objects are lit from our left, and the area beneath the tabletop is cast into deep shadow. To our left, the stoneware jug has a flaring foot, a round body, a handle next to its tall, ridged neck, and the narrow opening is covered with a metal cap. The jug has an olive-green band around the base and an oval of the same color on its body, enclosing a coat of arms. The crest has three, stacked Xes, and the date 1650 at the top. The cupped, metal lid is affixed to the top of the jug’s handle so it can be flipped up with a thumbpiece. The long, white pipe lies along the front edge of the table with its bowl tipped toward us. A knot of burning ash appears to have knocked out of the bowl. Behind the pipe is a folded, rumpled piece of paper holding nibs of dark brown, dried tobacco. More tobacco is scattered around the pipe, along with the ends of broken pipes, which resemble sticks of white chalk. A terracotta-brown dish holds a burning ember at the back of the table. The artist signed the work as if he had inscribed the front edge of the table with cursive letters, “Jan van de Velde fecit.”
  • A wood table is piled with stylized and abstracted objects, including a jug, lemons, a knife, guitar, newspaper, and a smoking pipe in this horizontal still life painting. The objects are made up of areas of mostly flat color and many are outlined in black, creating the impression that some shapes are two-dimensional and assembled almost like a collage. We look down onto the top of the table and at the front, where the grain of the wood is painted in tan against a lighter background. Concentric black and white circles make up the knob on the face of the table’s single drawer. There are two rows of objects on the table. Along the front, near the left corner of the table, the knife hangs with its blade slightly over the open drawer. A newspaper with the title “LE JOUR” rests next to the knife. Next to the newspaper are two yellow pieces of fruit, near the front right corner of the table. Behind the fruit, the right third of the pitcher is marine blue and the left two thirds is mostly straw yellow, with one round olive-green area near the handle. Next to the pitcher is a tobacco pipe, and, at the back left edge of the table, the guitar. The instrument rests on its side so the front of the soundboard faces the viewer, and the neck extends to our left. The instrument is bisected lengthwise into two halves that appear to be spliced together, and the edges and features of the halves are not symmetrical or aligned with each other. The bottom half of the guitar is painted a beige color, and is curved like a typical guitar body. The top half is painted black, and the contour of the instrument’s body rises into two pointed peaks instead of mirroring the rounded forms below. The sound hole is markedly smaller on the bottom half, and the two halves of the hole do not exactly line up. A rectangular form behind the table could be a screen. The left side is fern green, the right side black. Behind the screen is a wallpapered wall above wood paneling. The wallpaper is patterned with teardrop shapes, dots, and zigzagging lines in fawn brown against parchment white. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “G Braque 29.”

Explore More

Article:  Who Is Charles Ethan Porter? 7 Things to Know

Porter was the first known professional Black artist to specialize in still lifes, and his paintings were admired by the likes of writer Mark Twain and painter Frederic Edwin Church.

Article:  Three Women Artists You May Not Have Heard Of

Meet the 17th-century painters Fede Galizia and Gesina Ter Borch. And see the only known work by Caterina Angela Pierozzi.

Two roosters, a rabbit, and three small birds hang from the top of this vertical still life painting, so the heads of one white rooster and the rabbit come to rest on a dark stone ledge, about a third of the way up the composition. To our left, the tawny-brown rabbit’s nose faces us as the head rests on an azure-blue purse with silver lining. A pair of scissors is tucked behind the strap, which falls down over the ledge. To our right, the head of the rooster curves away with its red coxcomb coming toward us. A black fly rests on the rooster’s comb. The black tail feathers of another rooster arc out behind it, near the upper right corner of the painting. In front of the rabbit's bound, hind legs is a small bird with puffed, silvery-gray feathers, and one black leg tied up with a dark cord. To our left are two more small birds, one with gray, cream, and tan feathers, the other with cream, golden orange, and lapis blue. These two are secured with their beaks pointing upward. Two white and scarlet-red caps, falcon’s hoods, are strung up by white ribbon near the pair of birds. Below the ledge is a carved scene with nude or nearly nude people, but this area is mostly in shadow. Behind the animals is a dark, nearly black wall.

Article:  Making Pictures of the Animals We Eat

When Dutch artist Willem van Aelst painted dead animals, did he use the images to grapple with the full circle of life?

You may also like

We look across rolling, bright green pastures and honey-brown farmland to a cluster of buildings nestled beyond a copse of trees, along the horizon in this horizontal, stylized landscape painting. The scene is painted with mostly flat areas of color. Closest to us, low, vibrant green pastures are bisected by a narrow, gingerbread-brown path. The path meanders from the lower left corner of the composition to a metal gate, near the right edge of the painting. A short distance from us to our left, a man wearing navy-blue pants, shirt, and hat walks along the top of a hill, hands in pockets. Two black and white cows and one brown and white cow graze nearby. In the distance, the copse of trees is painted with pockets of pumpkin orange, lavender purple, sky blue, and spring and muted sage green. Beyond the trees, a white, square, two-story house with a spruce-blue roof sits within the grouping of buildings. Another white building with a blue roof stands a bit to our right. Wisps of white clouds dot a vivid blue sky, which is tinted with pale pink and lilac purple near the horizon. The artist signed and dated the work in harvest yellow against a mound of dark brown rocks in the lower right corner: “P. Gauguin 90.”

Landscapes

The beauty of the natural world has beguiled artists for centuries, and they have taken a wide variety of approaches to depicting it. Impressionists studied light and color, the artists of the Hudson Valley School created monumental views of the American sublime. And abstract artists have capture how landscapes feel rather than how they appear.

Portraits

Portraits represent people, either real or imagined, attempting to capture their appearance or essence. Some artists explored the human form and emotions through portraits of loved ones. Others made a living depicting wealthy or important people. And artists like Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh frequently used themselves as models.