Still Life with Asparagus and Red Currants

Still Life with Asparagus and Red Currants shows a bundle of asparagus laid against a dark ground with a few sprays of translucent red currants, arranged with the altar-like economy for which Adriaen Coorte is prized. A virtually obscure painter in his own day, Coorte is today celebrated for the quiet, concentrated still lifes he produced in the town of Middelburg, often in the small scale seen here. Signed and dated 1696, near the end of his career as a specialist, the picture distils Dutch still-life painting to its essence, every vegetable and berry rendered with reverent precision.