Still Life with Stoneware Jug, Wine Glass, Herring, and Bread

In Claesz's Haarlem, herring was everyday food, gutted and salted at sea by the Dutch fishing fleet and cheap enough for almost anyone. Here one lies across a pewter plate beside a broken roll. Behind it stands a stoneware jug with a pewter lid, the kind the Dutch bought from the Rhineland, and on the right a tall roemer of wine, with knobs of glass on its stem to keep a greasy hand from slipping. Claesz put his monogram and the year 1642 on the wall beside it.

The Museum of Fine Arts points out a habit of his that is easy to find here. The knife handle juts out over the edge of the white cloth, toward the viewer, so a table arranged with great care has one thing on it that looks ready to fall.

The panel came to the museum from Edward Wheelwright, a Bostonian trained as a lawyer who in 1855 had gone to Barbizon to study painting with Jean-François Millet. His widow's bequest brought it to the museum in 1913.