With the doors to art collections mostly closed, curator Gabriella de la Rosa selects some of the nation’s finest works to enjoy from home.
Aluscious arrangement of late-season fruit is amassed at the base of a young oak tree. Clusters of grapes nestle between plump peaches, unhusked corn and a single, rotund gourd. Encroaching on this display is a rich woodland understorey: fungi, thistle, white dead-nettle, forget-me-not and thorny sprays of bramble. Brilliant flashes of red and orange in the form of physalis seed heads, rowan berries and corn kernels enliven this shaded spot. A chipped stone plinth is a singular vestige of what may have once been a formal garden. The scene teems with snails and insects – creatures whose short lifespans embody transience and impermanence, the hallmarks of a vanitas. So too do the ripening fruits, some on the cusp of over-maturing and rotting. White mould blooms on a grape; the dewy flesh of a peach has split. In the lower right corner, a miniature drama unfolds: a lizard feasts on a speckled egg in a bird’s nest.
Still Life With Fruit, Bird’s Nest and Insects is a masterful study of earthly abundance and forces of decay, the promise of life and the certainty of death. It is the work of Rachel Ruysch (1664-1740), one of the most admired flower painters of the Dutch golden age and perhaps the most successful... Keep reading on The Guardian.
Aluscious arrangement of late-season fruit is amassed at the base of a young oak tree. Clusters of grapes nestle between plump peaches, unhusked corn and a single, rotund gourd. Encroaching on this display is a rich woodland understorey: fungi, thistle, white dead-nettle, forget-me-not and thorny sprays of bramble. Brilliant flashes of red and orange in the form of physalis seed heads, rowan berries and corn kernels enliven this shaded spot. A chipped stone plinth is a singular vestige of what may have once been a formal garden. The scene teems with snails and insects – creatures whose short lifespans embody transience and impermanence, the hallmarks of a vanitas. So too do the ripening fruits, some on the cusp of over-maturing and rotting. White mould blooms on a grape; the dewy flesh of a peach has split. In the lower right corner, a miniature drama unfolds: a lizard feasts on a speckled egg in a bird’s nest.
Still Life With Fruit, Bird’s Nest and Insects is a masterful study of earthly abundance and forces of decay, the promise of life and the certainty of death. It is the work of Rachel Ruysch (1664-1740), one of the most admired flower painters of the Dutch golden age and perhaps the most successful... Keep reading on The Guardian.