Still Life: Flowers and Fruit, Severin Roesen
Somehow, Roesen, one of America’s premier 19th century still life painters, manages to make this arrangement look simultaneously lurid, bizarre and naturalistic. I love the handling of the plums and the little droplets of water scattered about.
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Use “Fullscreen” link and zoom or download arrow.
I have to admit I get great delight in these types of paintings! ! ! Thanks for sharing!
The first time I read concerning Rösen’s work is about his ‘horror vacui’ ( = fear of the empty, or the filling of the entire surface of a space or an artwork with detail). I’m complete the opposite, just because I wouldn’t know how to fill up vacuums (wrong choice of word) in my drawings etc. as to avoid clutter.
American Paintings: A Catalogue of the Met. Museum of Art, pages 107-109, comments on Severin Roesen with personal details.
Aelle this is an interesting comment, thanks for sharing! It is so intersting to study the stylistic choices of different painters in their still lives, and to learn about the reasons behind those choices.
This is an unexpected painting for 19th century, I did not know that painters made this kind of still live in this period I thought they were out of date by mid 18th century. I have to look up the painter and learn more about it.
Roesen was noted for just that – carrying on the approach to still life from earlier in the century.
