Dining with Pieter Claesz

The table is laid, the food is served: crispy rolls, glistening fresh oysters, salted fish and succulent pies are a veritable invitation to eat. The leading figure in depicting such moments of culinary delight in the Dutch Baroque period was Pieter Claesz (1597/1598–1660). Born in Flanders and later working in Haarlem, the artist is regarded as the most innovative exponent of the genre of monochrome ‘banketjes’. These colour-restricted still lifes of meals made Claesz famous in his day and became his trademark. The surfaces and textures of textiles, crockery and food – such as artfully sliced lemons – are painted with such nuance that, in their details, they appear natural, indeed deceptively real, and seem to invite the viewer to reach out and touch them.

Under the title Dining with Pieter Claesz, the Kunst Museum Winterthur, in collaboration with the Kaiserschild Foundation, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Alte Galerie of the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz, is presenting a concise cabinet exhibition. The focus is on exquisite still lifes that tell of the eating habits and living conditions of the emerging bourgeoisie during the so-called Golden Age of the Netherlands. Yet it is not merely beauty, splendour and pleasure that are depicted. The paintings are also moral messengers. They speak of the transience of food as well as of life; the fleeting nature and finitude of all earthly things are particularly evident in the vanitas still lifes.

The exhibition is complemented by high-resolution digital reproductions of three still lifes by Claesz, which were created as part of the Kaiserschild Art Defined project and specially adapted for art education. A multimedia table invites visitors to engage with the works interactively. The exhibition is also accompanied by short films offering fascinating insights into the still-life genre and the painter’s life and work.

Curated by Andrea Lutz