Still Life with Shells, Fruit, and Flowers

In seventeenth-century Europe, Dutch artists were the leading innovators in the new genre of still life, and the practitioners chose specialties. Balthasar van der Ast, who was established in Middelburg and Utrecht before spending the greatest part of his career in Delft, painted combinations of flowers, fruits, and shells, either gathering the flowers in vases or spreading them on tables, as here. He was one of the earliest artists to add insects, like the worm, bumblebee, and mayfly in this painting. Hidden meanings are common in still life and can range from the cycle of seasons (spring flowers ­contrasting with summer fruits) to the continents (the exotic shells evoking distant oceans). On a spiritual level, the still life alludes to the vanitas theme since one of the plums has been partially eaten, and an insect’s life is notoriously short. Handbook of the Collections, 2013

Shifting from the Bosschaert style pioneered by his master, Van der Ast began to paint looser and less symmetrical compositions, featuring a greater variety in the subjects he portrayed. Strewn across an unadorned stone ledge are flowers, shells, and fruits; behind them, across the back wall, spans a soft beam of light. Insects inject the stillness of this arrangement with a sense of movement.

Van der Ast plays with the different meanings associated with his compositional elements that may have come to viewers’ minds. The cut flowers and half-eaten plum suggest life’s ephemerality, and yet the liveliness of the insects counterbalances this theme of vanitas. The numerous shells might have served as an admonishment against material possession; perhaps in evoking exotic, faraway lands they also demonstrate an appreciation of the beauty and diversity of God’s creation.

Ezra Shin, Princeton Class of 2024