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The Artist’s Bounty

Sink your teeth into these juicy paintings

September 2013

Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-84), Still Life, 17th Century. Oil on canvas, 82.8x108 cm. Private Collection/Johnny Van Haeften Ltd., London/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Identify objects in the foreground, middle ground, and background in this painting.

Have you ever wondered why there are so many paintings of fruit? Fruit makes a great subject because, unlike a person posing for a portrait, it can’t get up and walk away. An artist can return to an arrangement of fruit many times until the painting is perfect.

Paintings of fruit and other inanimate objects are called still lifes. But there is nothing still about a still life. Look at the four paintings on these pages, completed over the past 400 years. Each one shows fruit, but they are as different as, well, apples and oranges.

Pay attention to how each artist handles space. Space is the physical area represented in a painting. The world is three-dimensional. Some artists translate space, which we can move over, under, around, and through, onto a flat, two-dimensional surface called the picture plane.

Fruit in the Front

Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560-1627), Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, c. 1602. Oil on canvas, 69x84.5 cm. San Diego Museum of Art/Gift of Anne R. and Amy Putnam/The Bridgeman Art Library.

How does Cotán use negative space in this painting?

Seventeenth-century Dutch artist Jan Davidsz de Heem’s (yahn da-veed de heem) Still Life, at the top of this page, is a complicated scene. But it is clear that the objects in the foreground, such as the peeled lemon, are closest to the viewer. The landscape through the open window, on the left in the background, is farthest from the viewer. Objects in the middle ground, such as the lobster, are in between.

Juan Sánchez Cotán (hwahn Sahn-ches co-tan), a Spanish painter working around the same time as de Heem, handled the space in his still life Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, above right, differently. The objects are all in the foreground, placed near the edge of a horizontal plane, or surface. Vertical planes rise on either side of the scene. The corners where the vertical and horizontal planes meet are diagonal lines that reach into the darkened background, giving the scene depth.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Still Life with Teapot and Fruit, 1896. Oil on canvas, 18 3/4x26 in. The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1997, Bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002 (1997.391.2). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.

Notice the figure in the background on the right. How does a human presence make this painting different from the others on these pages?

All About Lines

Objects that overlap, or partially cover, one another also give clues about the space represented in a painting. French artist Paul Gauguin (go-GAN) completed Still Life with Teapot and Fruit, above, in 1896. The mango in the foreground is entirely visible, while the one all the way in the background is mostly covered.

American Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein played with this same idea in his 1973 Still Life with Crystal Bowl, bottom right. Each object in the painting is outlined in black with areas of solid, flat color. The green grapes seem to sit on top of the bananas, which partially hide the apples. How can you tell which fruit is in the foreground?

Around the Subject

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), Still Life with Crystal Bowl, 1973. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 52x42 in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase, with funds from Frances and Sydney Lewis. 77.64. Digital Image, ©Whitney Museum of American Art, NY. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

What does Lichtenstein do to emphasize the shape of each piece of fruit?

Positive space is the shape of the objects represented in a work of art. In Cotán’s work, the positive space is occupied by the fruit. The negative space is the area around it, the dark wall in the background. Look at the shape of the wall and the shape of the fruit. Why do you think the artist hung the objects on the left?

The use of negative and positive space in Lichtenstein’s Still Life with Crystal Bowl is a bit confusing. The bowl of fruit is the positive space. Do you think the repeating black stripes are negative or positive space? Why?

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