Provenance: private collection
This banketje, which is at once lavish and austere, concentrates within it the essential characteristics of the refined art of Laurens Craen. Judging from its date,...
read moreProvenance: private collection
This banketje, which is at once lavish and austere, concentrates within it the essential characteristics of the refined art of Laurens Craen. Judging from its date, it can be situated as one of the top works from the artist’s period of early maturity.
The composition is at once simple and sophisticated: on a simple stone table covered with a cloth turned up at the edge, in an artful play of diagonals, have been arranged a jug, a lobster, a lemon and above all, some grapes whose branches and leaves with their interlacing convolutions play an essential role as a linking element that ensures the spatial integration of the scene.
Unlike his master Balthazar van der Ast, whose vine branches and foliage melt away into an abstract background, Craen uses the curls of the vines together with chiaroscuro in order to integrate the composition within the pictorial space.
The effect is that, beyond the initial impression of a naturalistic disorder, he creates a perfectly controlled construction of interwoven forms and volumes. And the sense of drama provided by the chiaroscuro brings out more intensely Craen’s delicate and varied palette, which is punctuated by deep greens, brilliant yellows and vermillons.
Craen excelled in the rendering of textures, and appears equally at home with rendering the hardness of metal as the velvety surface of the fruit or the shine of the earthenware. In this regard, a surprising contrast becomes apparent, most likely only upon a second look, in the motif of the butterfly in the foreground. With its speckled wings outspread, creating a camouflage, it offers a disturbing counterpoint to the grape leaves that have been gnawed through by worms: the latter signifying the vanitas of the pleasures of the senses set against the promise of the eternal life of the human soul as symbolized by the butterfly coming out of its cocoon, the contrast easily takes on a greater symbolism.
In activity in Middelburg from 1650 to 1664
Laurens Craen was a Dutch painter who specialised in the representation of still lives with fruit and food arranged upon a table or console.
His life and...
read moreIn activity in Middelburg from 1650 to 1664
Laurens Craen was a Dutch painter who specialised in the representation of still lives with fruit and food arranged upon a table or console.
His life and career are not well documented yet but his production has been thoroughly inventoried and is to this day much sought-after. His name is mentioned in the archives of Middleburg, testifying that he was active there from 1655 till 1664.
His partiality for minute details is served by a very precise technique doubled with a very keen sense of colour. His virtuosity appears namely in the delicate shades with which he renders the steely sharpness of metals and the bright softness of fruit flesh.
In the making, Laurens Craen’s technique reveals and admirable dexterity, modelling shapes through the skilful interplay of light and dark colours, and gradually toning down the shades in order to create the illusion of distance between the various objects. Planes and volumes intermingle, creating a dense composition in which light glorifies the colours. The bold palette is made up of green, ochre, yellow and vermilion, which combine to create the vibrating contrasts in which the painter takes a sheer delight.
The utter beauty of his works resides in their intense expressivities, in their colour harmony, which encompasses and unites the painter’s brilliantly aesthetic interpretation of forms. While combining several choice shapes, Laurens Craen achieves a peaceful atmosphere of privacy, contemplation and meditation. A marvellous sense of rhythm enables him to capture the vital element in each of his objects. As a consequence, his compositions unfold a most refined elegance: both elaborate and complex, radiant with the purple and golden mellowness of fruit, they reveal a decisive fascinated fondness for riches.
Still life with fruit, glass of white wine and lobster
