Title: Still Life
1Teacher Resource PackStill LifeKey Stages 3, 4
5
2Colour and composition
- Evaristo Baschenis (1617 1677)
- Still-life with Musical Instruments, 1660
- Italy
- Look closely at this picture for 30 seconds!
- Q. What can you see?
- Lots of musical instruments, including a violin
which sits on top of a shiny black box. Q. What
do we keep in boxes? - What could be inside this box?
- This is a jewellery box. There is another little
red box inside it. - The instrument on the left of the painting with a
five sided top is called a spinettino. - The stripy instrument behind the spinettino, and
the instrument on the far right are both lutes.
Q. What kind of material do they look like they
are made out of? - There are two books in the painting.
- There is a fruit, possibly an orange, next to the
violin.
A spinettino
3- Style and symbolism
- Q. Is this a photograph?
- Q. Why might some people think its a photograph?
- Everything is painted very realistically, notice
the dust painted on the lute on the right. - Q. There is something wrong with the violin on
top of the box, what is the matter with it? - All of its strings are broken .
- Q. Why might the strings be broken?
- The artist, who was also a priest and a deeply
religious man, may have painted the broken violin
and the dusty lutes in this manner in keeping
with the vanitas tradition of still life
painting. - A vanitas is a still life intended to remind the
viewer of the short lived nature of worldly
possessions the futility of human
accomplishments and the inevitability of death. - The violin with the broken string may,
therefore, refer to the futility of pleasure. - The orange, (like the apple) could be said to
symbolise the fruit of temptation.
4- Colour and composition
- Jan Davidsz de Heem
- Still Life with Nautilus Cup, 1632
- Netherlands
- Look at this picture for 30 seconds!
- Q. How old do you think it is? Its 379 years old
- Q. What do you see?
- Whole lemon, lemon peel, slices of lemon, grapes,
- grapevine, walnut, silver plate, bowl (on its
side), vase, cup or tazza (which has been
knocked over), a nautilus cup a precious
drinking cup with a nautilus shell, table with
dark table cloth. - Q. Do you think everyone had objects like this
379 years ago, or would they have been rare and
expensive? Who might have used objects like this? - Q. Did the artist find these objects like this or
did he arrange them carefully? He arranged them
carefully.
5Context
- Symbolism
- Lemons at that time
- were a rarity in Holland,
- and were therefore considered to be rather
precious. They also grew all year round which
could be a reference to fertility. - Grapes are also used in art often referring to
the use of wine by Christians to celebrate the
Eucharist, and of - course wine was consumed
- at the Last Supper.
- De Heem was a Dutch artist who made this painting
when the Netherlands (Dutch Republic) was at war
with Spain. - The Netherlands was becoming very rich and
powerful at this time, but it was also a
Protestant country where large scale religious
images were shunned in favour of small scale
still life paintings in domestic settings rather
than churches. - Although this painting is smaller and much more
subdued than the grand religious paintings made
by catholic artists, the objects in this painting
would have all been extremely hard to source,
and therefore very expensive markers of status
and wealth.
- The Nautilus Cup
- Below is a nautilus- a deep sea creature. Its
shell was used to make nautilus cups. It is a
prehistoric creature, still alive today. It is
only found in certain parts of the Indian and
Pacific Oceans hundreds of miles away from the
Netherlands!
- The nautilus is a mollusk and a member of the
cephalopod family. It is closely related to other
cephalopods such as the squid, cuttlefish, and
octopus.
6- Colour and composition
- Francois Bonvin (1817 1887)
- The Attributes of Painting, about1879
- France
- Look at this picture for 30 seconds!
- Q. What kind of objects can you see in this
painting? - There is a large brown folder (a portfolio) in
the background which is full of paper, in front
of this there is a rolled up piece of paper, some
paintbrushes and a paint palette on top of a
leather paint box, with a pink rose. - At the front, there is an inkwell, a red tube of
paintbrushes, three tubes of paint and a piece of
chalk.
Q. What kind of person would have used materials
like these? A painter. Francois Bonvin has
painted the materials of his profession. If you
look closely at portfolio, its possible to make
out a face. We dont know if this was
intentional, or coincidental. Q. What do you
think?
7Style and symbolism
- Bonvin was attached to the Realist movement a
group of painters who rejected the popular
mythological, historical and religious subjects
of the day in favour of scenes from everyday
life. They wanted to portray the world around
them as they saw it. - Mass produced tubes of paint had only recently
been invented when this painting was made.
Before that artists had to buy all their own raw
materials which they then had to grind down and
mix with linseed oil., then they stored their
paints in pigs bladders! By including tubes of
paint in this picture, Bonvin is proudly showing
his audience what the modern-day materials of a
painter look like. - Q. Do you think that Bonvin carefully arranged
everything in this picture, or did he simply find
these objects lying around in this way? - We know that Bonvin wanted to paint the world as
he saw it accurately - but he still probably
arranged this still life scene very carefully.
The addition of the rose suggests that the artist
still feels connected to the more symbolic still
life paintings that came before. - Q. When do people buy roses for each other? What
do they symbolise? - Roses often symbolise love. Bonvin might have
included one here as a reference to Louison
Kohler, the woman who was his companion, model
and muse for the last seventeen years of his
life.
8- Colour and composition
- Joseph-Fernand-Henri Léger (1881- 1955)
- Composition with fruit, 1938
- France
- Look at this picture for 30 seconds!
- This is not a painting with objects that we can
easily identify. It is an abstract painting full
of bold shapes and thick black lines, and it is
often up to us to work out what abstract artists
were painting. - Q. What could the round things at the bottom
left of the painting be? apples with worms
wriggling out? - Q. In the middle of the painting is a large shape
divided down the centre by a vertical black line.
Q. What could this be? It has shapes cut out of
it like a jigsaw puzzle. - Q. What other shapes and patterns can you see?
- What is a 3D square called? a cube
- a 3D circle? a sphere
Léger inspired many of the Pop artists! Q. Can
you name any Pop artists?
9- Context
- About the artist..
- Joseph-Fernand-Henri Léger was a French painter,
sculptor, and filmmaker. He initially trained as
an architect. - Léger wasnt interested in direct representation
he was an early abstract artist and wanted to
breakdown the world around him and paint it in a
different and simplified way. - He was fascinated by modern technology,
especially by motorcars he loved their precise
construction. - Q. Take another look at the paintingcould the
sharp shapes in the centre refer to the
individual parts of cars? - Léger was in World War I (1914-1918) and it is
thought that he was inspired by the machinery and
weaponry used during this time. - Q. So what else could the round shapes be? and
the big shape in the centre?
1930s car
- Although he loved the bright colours and new
technological forms of modern life, the apples
with worms inside could also be said to refer
back to more historical methods of still life
painting. Rotten apples being symbolic of the
fall when Eve picked the forbidden fruit and was
then expelled from the garden of Eden. Could
Léger, at the same time as honouring the new
technology of his day, also be warning us of some
future dangers that it may pose?
10Composition and technique Howard Hodgkin
Artificial Flowers, 1975 England Look at this
painting for 30 seconds! Q. What can you see?
what shapes and colours can you see? orange
circles, red curved shape, Q. What do the
orange shapes above the red curve look like?
oranges in a fruit bowl! The title of the
painting is Artificial Flowers Q. Can you
see any flowers in this picture?
Q. All of the other paintings you have looked at
are painted onto canvas. This is different, what
is it painted onto? wood. Q. Do you notice
anything unusual about the frame? There isnt
one! The artist has painted a thick black line
all the way around, which resembles a frame. Q.
How long do you think it took the artist to make
this painting? It might look like it was made
quickly, but in fact Hodgkin paints extremely
slowly, sometimes taking up to four years or more
to complete a single painting!
11- Style and context
- We might describe this painting as abstract, but
Hodgkin himself has always described himself as a
representational painter. - Q. What is abstract art?
- Abstract art art that doesnt depict
recognisable scenes or objects, but instead is
made up of forms and colours that exist for their
own expressive sake. - Q. What is representational art?
- Representational art to look like or to
resemble something. - Instead of representing objects, Hodgkin is
interested in representing feelings. - Q. How does this painting make you feel?
- His subject matter is often very personal. The
titles of his paintings often refer to memories,
like parties, dinners with friends, meetings and
departures. - Q. Is this a happy or sad picture?......
- What colours do we associate with being happy?
what are warm colours? - pinks, reds, yellows, oranges
- What colours do we associate with being sad? what
are cold colours? - blues and greens