Still Life

By about 1640, when this small panel was painted, Dutch still life had deliberately drained itself of colour. The fashion in Haarlem and Amsterdam was for the monochrome banketje, the modest laid table rendered almost entirely in silvery greys and warm browns, and Treck worked squarely inside it. On a table half covered by a rumpled cloth he set out only a few objects: a pewter jug, a tall wine glass, a small salt cellar. Nothing here is lavish. What the painter is really after is surface, the soft sheen of pewter, the light travelling through glass, the creases pressed into the linen, everything held within a narrow band of tone. These sober meals carried a gentle message about restraint and the emptiness of luxury, a taste that fitted a Protestant merchant city better than any groaning feast. The panel stands a little under 75 centimetres, made to be studied up close rather than seen across a hall.