Little is known of the mysterious life of Dutch painter AdriaenCoorte (circa 1660–after 1707), but since the recent rediscovery of his work, Coorte’s deliciously appealingpaintingsare receivingever-increasingacclaim.Asdistinguished from more ornate still life paintings of this era, Coorte’s simple compositions emanate an intimacy andmystique that charms the viewer, transcending time and the ordinariness of objects portrayed within. Coorte’s year of birth and death have yet to be determined, but it is believed he resided near Middelburg in the Netherlands, based in part on records from St Luke’s Guild in Middelburg for 1695-1696,where itwas recorded that “Coorde, painter of art” was fined for selling paintings. (Buvelot Q. The Still Lifes ofAdriaenCoorte [Active c.1683-1707]. TheHague, the Netherlands:RoyalPictureGalleryMauritshuis/WaandersPublishers, Zwolle; 2008:18.) It is unclear why he was not registered in the guild and thus licensed to sell his work. Prior to 1903, when a collector bequeathed Coorte’s Still Life With Asparagus to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Coorte’s work was largely unknown outside a small assemblage of art aficionados. As Laurens J. Bol, former director of the Dordrechts Museum, noted: “Two centuries were to pass before his work reaped national appreciation and ... admirationbeyondtheborders.” (BolLJ.AdriaenCoorte:AUniqueLate Seventeenth Century Dutch Still-Life Painter. Assen/ Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Van Gorcum; 1977:5.) Bol believed Coorte’s work stood out: “Coorte’s reproduction has something extra, an expression of the knowledge—or suspicion—that even in the littleproductsofnature there lies a great mystery.” (Bol, p 16.) Political disturbances in the late 1500s in Antwerp, Belgium, caused amigrationof Flemish subjectswith craftsmanship and artistic skills to Middelburg, which became a flourishing commercial center. This affluence was paralleled by a taste for extravagances that included art. In the early 1600s, painters in the region would include such still life painters as Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder and Balthasar van der Ast. Details of training received by Coorte are sketchy, but the style of his early work suggests the influence of Amsterdam painter Melchior d’Hondecoeter; it is thus inferred Coorte lived in Amsterdam for a time. As an example, Coorte’s 1683 Mountain Landscape With Ducks and 1683 Pelican and Ducks in a Mountain Landscape resemble paintings of birds by Hondecoeter. It is thought Coorte may have been involved with Hondecoeter’s work by serving as an assistant in the studio, as it is known that Hondecoeter had such assistants. The simplicity of Coorte’s paintings was consistent with theplain, unpretentiousHaarlem tradition, as exemplified by JanJanszvandeVelde’sStill LifeWithStrawberriesandCherries of 1658. In the late 1680s, in concert with older conventions, Coortealsocontributed to thegenreofvanitasart.Theseworks typically includedobjects that served to remindviewersof the fleetingnessof lifeandencourageapathofvirtue.Coorte’s 1688 work Vanitas Still Life in a Niche has been described thusly: “From left to right we see dice, a watch, an oil lamp with a smoulderingwick, apipewith tobacco, a flute-glass filledwith wine, a skull, playing-cards, a music book, a string instrument (a pochette) and a small shell. ... the wine and the tobacco recall the ephemeral pleasures of earthly existence, the playing cards and dice allude to the uncertainty of life. The watch recalls the passage of time, while the oil lamp and the smoulderingwick refer to the ‘extinction’ of ahuman life, here underscoredby thepresenceof the skull.” (Buvelot, pp30, 32.) In the 1690s and onward, Coorte’s repertoire of workwas largely devoted to exactingly executed paintings featuring fruits, asparagus,nuts, andshells.Coorteprobablywouldhave seen Isaac Van Duynen’s works such as Still Life With Strawberries,AsparagusandGrapes, suggestedbythe fact thatCoorte himself would go on to depict asparagus and fruit together in a number of paintings. In earlier work, Coorte had painted gooseberries in association with other elements, but beginning in 1693, gooseberries became a motif all their own. In Gooseberries on a Table, the dramatic illumination spotlights the texture of the leaves andheightens the luster and lucency of berries in their hues of cerise and celadon. “The flesh of the fruit seems to glimmer through the surface, the fine hairs of which give it a certain mat quality.” (Buvelot, pp 42-43.) The fruit repose on a solid stone-like surface, a typical component of Coorte’s still life compositions. In reflecting on the appeal of this oeuvre formodern sensibilities, the philosopher Schopenhauer commented: “Perhaps the reasonwhycommonobjects in still life seemso transfigured and generally everything painted appears in a supernatural light is that we then no longer look at things in the flux of time and in the nexus of cause and effect.” (SchopenhauerA.ManuscriptRemains,Volume I: EarlyManuscripts [1804-1818]. Oxford,UK/NewYork,NY/Hamburg, Germany: Berg Publishers; 1988:43.) To theworld’sdelight,Coorte’s artistic legacyhasemerged from obscurity to take its place with that of other 17thcentury still life painters. Recognition of his exquisite paintingshas includedselectionofGooseberries onaTableas awork of art featured on postage stamps in 1999 for the Dutch domesticpostal service. Incontemplating thestillnessofCoorte’s tranquil yet vivid paintings, for a fewmoments time seems to stop.
Read full abstract
Sep 1, 2021
Mary N Woods 
Open Access