If we take the time to look at some art reproductions that decorate the walls of the Thammasat University Library, we may discover interesting subjects for academic research and even thesis work. On U2 level of the Pridi Banomyong Library opposite the Ajarn Adul Room is Still Life with Flowers and Insects by Jan Brueghel the Elder. Since 1870, the original painting has been in the collection of the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden.
A still life is a painting showing subjects that do not move. Food, flowers, plants, rocks, shells, glasses, books, vases, jewelry, and coins are some of the objects typically found in still life paintings. The TU Library has a book on art which defines the term still life in more detail. It is Art: the Definitive Visual Guide, edited by Andrew Graham-Dixon, shelved in the General Stacks of the Boonchoo Treethong Library, Lampang Campus. For students and other readers who visit libraries on other TU campuses, it is easy to request books by clicking on the Book Delivery service link on the TU Library website. As the website explains,
Readers may expect to receive books in transit between Tha Prachan and Rangsit campuses within 1 day of request. Books requested before 10 am can be delivered by 2.30 pm that day. Requests made after 10 am receive responses by 2:30 pm on the next business day (weekends and official holidays not included). Requests from Lampang and Pattaya campuses, and the ETDA Library, receive responses within 7 working days.
Ancient origins
Still life paintings originated in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, and are also found in the Middle Ages. This type of painting had many things that made it popular. Artists appreciate when the subject they are trying to paint stays in one place and does not try to move. Apart from this convenience factor, there are reasons that people like to look at still life paintings. They often show things that we enjoy looking at, such as pretty flowers or tasty foods. The subjects of still life paintings are not always attractive, and sometimes they are meant to suggest that life is short and time is pasting quickly. This is not the main point of the still life on the U2 level of the Pridi Banomyong Library, which shows beautiful flowers.
Other paintings show such things as insects which are not supposed to be attractive. Instead, they are painted in such detail that the viewer is meant to admire the painter’s skill and wonder whether the insect is real or not. This kind of painting is often called trompe l’oeil, a French term that means to deceive the eye. If the skills of the artists are very great, they may deceive our eyes, and we may wonder if the insect painting on the canvas or frame of a painting is real.
The Belgian artist Jan Brueghel the Elder lived in the 1500s and 1600s. He painted flowers from samples that he gathered, often choosing rare and expensive blossoms to paint. He took special care to assemble his bouquets, something like Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement. Jan Brueghel the Elder was known as Velvet Brueghel, because his paintings were so smooth and expensive looking. He would include dozens of different flowers in a single painting. Since he was proud of being accurate in his painting of flowers, TU students of the Department of Agricultural Technology may be interested to see how closely he approached scientific illustrations in botany and plant science.
On the website of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the title of the painting is slightly different from the one found elsewhere, Still Life with Flowers in a Sculpted Jar. This is because hundreds of years ago, artists usually did not give titles to paintings, so later generations of owners and admirers would call them different things. Jan Brueghel’s still life paintings are very popular. In 2016, Sotheby’s auction house sold a still life by Jan Brueghel that resembles in some ways the still life from Stockholm that is reproduced on the U2 level of the Pridi Banomyong Library. The main difference is that the still life sold at Sotheby’s in 2016 did not include insects, but only flowers. It sold for 3,845,000 GBP or 157,322,978.17 Thai baht.
Artists before Jan Brueghel tended to put flowers in the corners of paintings as a decorative element, but he made them the main focus of his paintings. He once wrote to Cardinal Borromeo, a patron in Italy that he had begun a painting that was remarkable
as much for naturalness as for the beauty and rarity of various flowers, some are unknown and little seen in this area; for this, I have been to Brussels in order to depict some few flowers from nature that are not found in Antwerp… In this picture I have invested all my skill. I do not believe that so many rare and different flowers have ever been painted before, nor finished with such diligence: it will be a fine sight in the winter. Some of the colours are very close to the real thing.
Brueghel had to paint flowers in the seasons where they were available. He apparently did not make drawings of the flowers, but painted their portraits directly on the canvas. Unlike some noted painters of his time, he did not allow assistants or students to paint some details in his canvases. He took on all the responsibility himself. Brueghel’s customer Cardinal Borromeo was very pleased to receive the results. He would write:
I have had my study decorated with paintings… and the pleasure of beholding them seemed to me no less wonderful than the broad views of nature themselves… Paintings capture heaven and earth in the smallest of spaces, and we wander around inside them, undertaking long spiritual journeys, while standing still in our room.
Brueghel included so many flowers in a vase that his paintings sometimes look overstuffed. In real life, so many flowers are not ususally stuffed into a single vase. He used strong colors, including yellow, red, and blue, but in a delicate way. This gives his paintings a refined and expensive feeling.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)