s Still life in a garden - Hull Museums Collections

Still life in a garden

This delicately painted still life in a garden is a good example of the new fashions introduced into Netherlandish painting in the years around 1700. The precise barriers between the genres were beginning to break down and patrons could be satisfied by the combination of still life and landscape. This had the effect of giving the painting a greater decorative appeal and at the same time taxing the artist’s skill and ingenuity to the limit. The way all the elements are rendered is also evidence of the increasing emphasis on skill for its own sake. Patrons were less interested in the vanitas elements of still life and naturalistic landscape. Instead all was to be combined into a harmonious and essentially decorative whole.