Fine Art, Still Life, Shells, Feathers, Anneke van Brussel, Vintage Painting, 1988

Anneke van Brussel (b. 1949)
Still Life with One Red Onion
Dutch: 1988
Signed upper center “v. Brussel” and dated 1988
Watercolor and mixed media on paper
23.5 x 17 inches, image
25.5 x 19 inches, overall
Provenance: Alexander Milliken Gallery, New York and Hokin Kaufman Gallery, Chicago
$1,800

Trompe l’oeil still life painting of a safety pin and a marble, joined by an array of natural objects: feathers, shells, leaves, seedpods, insects, eggs, a rose, and a red onion. The items are fairly similar in scale and fairly evenly distributed across a flat surface so that they are mostly isolated from each other. The design encourages a contemplative comparison between different types of natural forms, for example, the way a dragonfly’s body resembles a nearby striped conical shell or the spine of a feather. The painting resembles traditional natural history illustrations and recalls the tradition of the Collector’s Cabinet, though with a contemporary artist’s interest in their formal qualities as opposed to 18th- and 19th-century illustrators’ interest in the scientific classification of species. It is clear, however, from looking at her larger body of work that she is deeply familiar with the natural history paintings of earlier centuries and has immersed herself in the traditions of realist painting.

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