Fruit Piece

In what may be a companion piece to the Getty’s own Vase of Flowers, Jan van Huysum combined the lustrous realism of seventeenth-century Dutch painting with the bright colors of the eighteenth century in a lavish still life of fruit and flowers: an asymmetrical arrangement of bursting, overripe fruit spills over the ledge, some of it falling prey to insects, while flowers droop under the weight of their extravagant blooms. Van Huysum deftly rendered the translucence of the grapes, the crisp surfaces of the leaves and the wiry texture of the vines, and the highly finished surface was the result of a laborious application of glazes whose technique he jealously guarded, allowing no visitors in his studio. Painted in 1722, the panel shows the Dutch master at the height of the fame that made him the most celebrated flower-and-fruit painter of his century. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.