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stillife | keukenhof 2025
This year, for the design of our JUB stand at Keukenhof, designer Carien van Boxtel was inspired by floral still lifes and still life artist Willem van Aelst and came up with the theme: ‘A mysterious Dutch Stillife’ - a mixture like a dramatic 17th-century still life.
Willem van Aelst: still-life artist
Willem van Aelst was born in 1627 in Delft, the son of the notary Jan van Aelst and Catharina de Veer. He learned the painter's trade from his uncle, still-life painter Evert van Aelst in Delft. After wanderings through France and Italy, where he was court painter to the Medicis, he settled on the Bloemgracht in Amsterdam in 1657, where he married his maid, having been rejected by the painter he was in love with. Van Aelst died in Amsterdam in 1683.Van Aelst was the tutor of Rachel Ruys, among others, who was apprenticed to him at the age of 15, as well as Jan van Huysem, both of whom subsequently created a furore. Works by his hand hang in the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, among others. His compositions were extraordinary. He was the first to introduce asymmetry in still lifes with bouquets that had previously been rather ‘stiff’ and formal.
Image: Still life with flowers, 1665, Musée Thomas Henri, Cherbourg-en-Cotentin
Flower still lifes
In the Netherlands of the prosperous 17th century, tulips were mainly painted, which were elevated to status symbols because of their scarcity and beauty, making them virtually unaffordable. There was a period when the painted tulip was cheaper than the physical tulip. In addition, the tulip on canvas bloomed all year round, causing an increase in demand for tulip still lifes. The bigger the painted bouquet, the more wealth. But also: the more expensive it was for the painter to make, as he first had to buy the tulips to repaint them in the studio. A practical solution was to repaint tulips from tulip growers' catalogues. Because of the short flowering period, tulip growers had an interest in having their tulips repainted so as to be able to display their assortment throughout the year. In the form of detailed prints, the grower could compile a catalogue. For painters, this meant a way to repaint tulips all year round; not having to spend a fortune on flowers and it gave him the opportunity to combine tulips from different flowering periods. The latter unintentionally created poetic time portraits of flowers that could never have been in a bouquet together.Besides tulips, the bouquets by van Aelst and later Ruys also showed other plants full of visual seduction: true spectacle pieces with insects, watches, chiaroscuro effects and beautiful vases. Even wilted flowers fit this picture: they symbolise transience and temporality. The still-life painters were masters of composition but above all of ‘chiaroscuro’: the theatrical lighting of objects.
Inspired by the still life with flowers from 1665, a very diverse mixture of tulips and naturalising bulbs was chosen. The tulips provide the red and pink hues, while the naturalising bulbs provide further visual seduction that was also visible in van Aelst's bouquets.
