Willem Claesz Heda
(1593 - 1680) |
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Still Lifes, Vanitas Art Work
| Name: |
Willem Claesz Heda |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Haarlem |
| Nationality: |
Dutch |
| Birth: |
1593 |
| Death: |
1680 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Still Lifes, Vanitas |
| Medium: |
Oil on canvas |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
Dutch BAroque |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
| Together with Pieter Claesz, Heda was the leading still-life painter in Haarlem. The two artists helped popularize the "breakfast-piece" still life, depicting relatively modest foods (for example: smoked fish, cheese, bread, wine, and a peeled lemon) rather austerely set out on pewter and glass. A monochrome palette of silvers, grays, and browns contributed to the subtlety and simplicity of these wonderful paintings. It is not clear whether Pieter Claesz or Heda was the innovator in the development of the ontbijte or breakfast still life, and the vanitas still life, which both artists treated. A Vanitas Still Life is considered by many scholars to be Willem's earliest signed work, as well as the earliest known representation of smoking material in a Dutch vanitas still life. Other scholars dispute the signature and date of any painting attributed to Heda before 1629, suggesting that such pictures are falsely signed or wrongly attributed. Attributional questions affect works of both Heda and Claesz, since their works have often been confused. There are further difficulties to distinguishing authentic autograph paintings by Willem from very close copies done by his pupils, including his son Gerrit, as well as Hendrick Heerschop and Maerten Boelema. Much of what we know about Willem's life is based on speculation. A portrait of Willem by Jan de Bray done in 1678 notes that the artist was eighty-four in that year, indicating that Willem must have been born in 1593 or 1594. We do not know where he was born, nor do we know who his teacher was, though Floris van Dijck is considered an influence on his early development. Once he became established, Willem was noted in Haarlem guild records with some frequency. He is first mentioned in 1631; in 1637 he was elected to an official post, and later he became dean. The date of his marriage and the name of his wife remain unknown, but we know that he had a son who became his pupil and remained a close follower. Willem evidently lived with a certain financial security, since he earned rent from two homes. His son Gerrit died prematurely in 1649 and his wife in 1668. During his long career as a painter, Willem made subtle but important contributions to his chosen subject matter. If Pieter Ciaesz did become independent earlier, as some modern scholars claim, then he first followed in Claesz's footsteps, constructing sober, restrained, yet lustily atmospheric arrangements of understatedry elegant objects. His Breakfast Still Life is a marvel of sensitively portrayed textures and light. By that year Willem had already achieved a sense of overall unity and cohesion that Pieter Claesz was accomplishing at roughly the same time. Although their careers obviously overlapped, Willem Heda*s work is his own. His touch is more delicate than Claesz's and his proclivity for finely wrought objects more pronounced. Willem evidently continually searched out new, precious objects for his paintings, introducing cylindrical silver saltcellars and also adding several ornate varieties of beer glasses to his assemblies over the years. Several kinds (including, brilliantly enough, a broken one) are found in his superb Still Life with Oysters, Rummer, and Silver Tazxa in Rotterdam. By that date Willera achieved a sense of monumentality rarely evident in still-life painting at that time. The hushed, dignified arrangement has the quiet, gentle sense of poetry that is later found in the still lifes of Willem Kalf. Heda was particularly adept at achieving highly convincing illusions of depth and atmosphere around the objects he so lovingly described in paint. He generally employed the horizontal format for still lifes that was popular in the 1630s and 1640s, adopting the lower viewpoint that was coming into favor. In the 1640s his relatively austere and restrained compositions became larger and more ornate and occasionally employed a vertical format. Often featuring a costly silver spouted vessel, these later still lifes lose some of the harmonious totality of his earlier pictures in favor of the cumulative impressive effect of numerous costly objects. His tendency in that direction can be found in his Still Life with Silver Vessels. Despite his development toward more sumptuous effects, he maintained a monochromatic palette long after other artists had introduced more color. It has been suggested that Heda responded to the more elaborate still lifes being popularized by Willem Kalf in the 1640s. If he did, Heda certainly found his own means to do so, gaining a different kind of opulence than Kalf achieved. Heda's style does not change essentially from then on. His last dated works are from 1664 and 1665. Though he lived on until the 1680s, it is assumed that he ceased working in his 70s or 80s. |
Samples of Work
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