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Your galleryBreakfast Still Life
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- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Find the window reflected in the overturned pewter jug, then look for the plates jutting over the table’s edge and the creases left in the white cloth.
The meal looks abandoned, with a jug knocked over and oysters left on their plates, but the Art Institute of Chicago shows how carefully Willem Claesz. Heda arranged it: flat pewter plates in front, upright glasses and a salt cellar behind, and the fallen jug on the diagonal joining them. The National Gallery counts Heda among the first painters of the tonal, almost monochrome still life.
Oil on panel · 52 × 80.1 × 0.9 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Baroque · Dutch Golden Age
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Breakfast Still Life
- Artist
- Willem Claesz. Heda (Dutch, 1594-1680)
- Date
- 1647
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 52 × 80.1 × 0.9 cm (20 1/2 × 31 9/16 × 3/8 in.); Framed: 69.9 × 97.8 × 7 cm (27 1/2 × 38 1/2 × 2 3/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Bequest of Donald and Carol Asher
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.