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©
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Willem van Aelst

Still Life with Fruit

1664
Oil on canvas.
67.3 x 52.1 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
1
(
1968.1
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
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30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
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Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
Willem van Aelst trained with his uncle Evert van Aelst in his native city of Delft and opted to specialise in still-life painting. At the age of eighteen he left Holland and settled in France where he lived between 1645 and 1649. He is then documented in Florence between 1649 and 1656 where he worked with the painter Otto Marseus van Schrieck and gained commissions from Cardinal Giovan Carlo de’Medici. Works by the artist from this period are to be found in the Palazzo Pitti. After eleven years away from Holland, Van Aelst returned to Delft in 1656 then moved to Amsterdam in 1657. He executed still lifes with flowers, dead game, weapons, foodstuffs and table items. His compositions changed little over the course of his career and are characterised by plain, dark backgrounds against which the various elements are outlined, and the use of veined marble tabletops or rich textiles, particularly velvet. Van Aelst also tended to locate the vases and other principal elements at the extreme front edge of the tabletops.

In the present work, whose paint surface has been affected by an old restoration, Van Aelst used a habitual composition within his oeuvre but with some variations. He depicts a veined, grey and brown marble tabletop of which only one, turned leg is visible on the left. On top of the table is a costly cloth, which may be silk to judge from the type of folds, on which the artist has located the vase at the very edge of the table. The blue of the cloth is a colour frequently used by Van Aelst, as is the background against which the fruit and branches are outlined, illuminated by a cool light.

Van Aelst here includes two materials, glass and metal, which he was particularly skilled in depicting, revealing his technical merits and pleasure in interpreting the striking effects of light on these surfaces. The arrangement of flowers in the vase is unusual as rather than including striking blooms as its principal motif, it focuses on branches of different citrus trees with their finely painted fruit. The volume and weight of the fruit indicate that they must be supported on thick stalks or branches that have disappeared into the background but which provide a perch for one of the goldfinches at the top. The inclusion of these birds was one of Van Aelst’s innovations in his still lifes.

The present canvas, painted after the artist had settled in Amsterdam, is a good example of the Dutch interest in the cultivation of citrus fruit, which was not particularly suited to the climate of the Low Countries. Gaskell refers to the publication in 1676 of a book that lists more than twenty species of citrus fruit, illustrated with engravings. It may offer one of the keys to interpreting this painting.

Mar Borobia
17th Century17th Century - Dutch paintingPaintingOilcanvas
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Still Life with Fruit. Bodegón con frutas, 1664
Still Life with Fruit
Willem van Aelst

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Still Life with Fruit. Bodegón con frutas, 1664
Still Life with Fruit
Willem van Aelst

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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