Still Life
1663
Maria van Oosteryck
During the Seventeenth Century there was a great fashion for still life paintings, most notably of flower arrangements. Maria van Oosteryck was greatly acclaimed at the time, and her works were much sought after. This is all the more remarkable since women were still generally excluded from the world of art, except as models. Flower painting was one of a handful of genres considered suitable for women. Even so, Oosteryck was considered ahead of the whole field, male and female.
One of the features of these paintings which was so popular was their grouping together of flowers of different seasons. It would have been quite impossible to have an actual vase of flowers like this in one's house.
Part of Oosteryck's charm is her jewel-like colouring. She achieves this both with her use of oils and her use of chiaro scuro which northern artists had learned from their Italian counterparts. The dark background and the shadows throw the colours forward to us.
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