The still life, or nature morte to use the dramatic French wording, has long been a compulsory exercise for artists. Arrangements of flowers, fruit in bowls, fruit and flowers or sometimes scenes of food at a table are commonly favorite themes, these everyday objects of decorative or gustatory delight often made even lovelier by the right painter.
There are, however, other still lifes which take the concept to a more unusual or deeper level. Such works seem to provoke a greater focus on the idea of life beyond the still life, rather than a mere glimpse of stopped time or aesthetic perfection. This transcendence is particularly exemplified in the following paintings by Martin Johnson Heade, William Harnett and Salvador Dalí.
Martin Johnson Heade’s Apple Blossoms in a Nautilus Shell
Pennsylvania-born Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) studied with Quaker artist Edward Hicks, famed painter of The Peaceable Kingdom, before moving to New York to start his own successful career. Heade excelled at luminist landscapes and close-up nature studies of orchids and hummingbirds, but he also produced many evocative and intriguing interior still lifes. Heade’s choice of fabric backdrops helped to further distinguish his still lifes, like his stunning creamy white magnolias draped on blue velvet, which earned him a United States commemorative postage stamp in 2004.
Heade’s pictured 1870 Still Life with Apple Blossoms in a Nautilus Shell is a fine example of his flair for the form, offering a composition of various feminine accessories on a table. The nautilus shell has been fashioned into a vase that holds pink and white apple blossoms. Fringed silky fabric half covers a small ornate box and pearls on a strand meet to form a Christian cross. Youth and beauty prevail, with no elements of seduction like cosmetics or perfume; the scene has its own natural sensuality, appropriately tempered by wholesome late 19th century virtues.
William Harnett’s Pipe, Tobacco and Trompe L’Oeil
Brought to the United States from Ireland as a baby, William Michael Harnett (1848-1892) later apprenticed as an engraver and developed a meticulous eye for detail. After further study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Harnett found quite a bit of success in painting still lifes. Harnett’s works were curiously different, however, involving objects not often featured in still life compositions along with several atypical arrangements.
Harnett also had such a talent for visual replication that he was formally accused of counterfeiting when he produced a painting of currency that unnerved authorities with its perfection. Another painting, The Old Violin, mesmerized many who saw it firsthand into reaching out to touch the canvas to make sure that the objects weren’t real.
Like a virile counterpart to the heady beauty of Heade’s apple blossoms and nautilus shell, an 1877 still life by Harnett involves a pipe, tobacco and a newspaper. These seemingly mundane items are vividly captured, from the torn paper seal on the tobacco canister to the tobacco flakes and crumbs of pipe ash, to the blue-tipped unused wooden matches and matches burnt to cinders. One can almost smell the fragrant smoke lingering in the room, especially since the pipe bowl still holds a small glowing bit of heat—an ember that will hopefully stay away from the potentially flammable newspaper that the pipe rests upon.
Salvador Dalí’s Eucharistic Still Life
Like many artists, Surrealist icon Salvador Dalí spent the early part of his life breaking free from what he perceived to be shackles of Catholic guilt. The child of a Catholic mother and an atheistic father, Dalí had always been conflicted about faith, but creative efforts of the 1920s-30s like Un Chien Andalou and The Sacred Heart showed a decided religious contempt. With the passing of time, however, and the epic questions of what happens after death circling in his mind, Dalí found himself moving towards his own sort of mystic Catholicism.
In 1949, Dalí actually had a meeting with Pope Pious XII, who blessed one of Dalí’s then-recent paintings featuring Dalí’s wife Gala as The Madonna of Port Lligat. In 1952, beyond that major reckoning, the man who had created such cryptic and personal works as The Persistence of Memory and The Burning Giraffe instead produced the hauntingly simple Eucharistic Still Life.
Eucharistic Still Life harkens back to the clarity and religious themes of the Renaissance, and features a white cloth, three silvery fish and two plain loaves of bread. Part of the composition is sunlit, while the other is not. The symbolism of bread and fish likely comes from the Gospel account of Jesus Christ miraculously feeding a crowd of thousands with five loaves and two fish.
While Dalí’s religious awakening seemed to center more around the artist known as Salvador rather than any wholly selfless conversion, Eucharistic Still Life is nonetheless a compelling example of Dalí’s diverse talents and fascinations—and a reminder of how so little can bring about so much.
Sources
- William Harnett: Trompe L'Oeil Master – National Gallery of Art
- Martin Johnson Heade – Terra Foundation for American Art
- Dalí and Religion (Dalí: Liquid Desire) – National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
