Still Life with Asparagus

Small, severe still lifes — a few vegetables, fruits or shells set on a stone ledge against darkness — were the whole subject of Adriaen Coorte, and this small panel of asparagus is among the works on which his modern reputation rests. He worked at Middelburg in Zeeland, far from the Amsterdam market that supported the great flower and banquet painters of the Golden Age, and only about eighty signed paintings by him are known; the present one is dated 1697. He often painted in oil on paper which was afterwards laid down on panel, a modest technique that suited subjects drawn from the kitchen garden and the beach rather than silver and porcelain, and he concentrated the light so that each object is considered in isolation. Virtually forgotten after his death, Coorte was recovered only in the twentieth century, when the Dutch art historian Laurens J. Bol assembled the first catalogue of his work and established him among the most admired of Dutch painters. The painting is held in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.