Still life with a roemer, fish, bread, walnuts, onions and grapes on a dark cloth

When Willem van Aelst dated this small canvas 1679, he had spent decades supplying wealthy collectors with still lifes finished to a jeweller's polish. Here the subject is humbler, a plain meal, the picture later nicknamed Das Frühstück, the breakfast. On a dark cloth lie herring, bread, walnuts, onions and a few grapes, beside a roemer of pale wine. The herring is the telling detail. Salted and barrelled by the shipload, it was the fish that underwrote much of Dutch prosperity, set out here as offhandedly as the bread. The roemer, that thick green wine glass, is studded with little raised knobs called prunts, meant to hold it steady in greasy fingers, the ordinary equipment of a table van Aelst could still make glint like something worth keeping.