Composition 24

Fish meant a lot to the Dutch and to their painters. Under constant threat from the encroaching sea, it’s no wonder. Their canvases abound with marine creatures, sitting on sideboards, marinating in barrels or prepared for a feast. Their meanings were manifold, from the discarded shell of the humble mussel representing piety, to more lascivious oysters and lobsters, to the herring which had lined the pockets of many an Amsterdam merchant.

Here marine and floral still-life traditions meet in an explosion for the senses.
Two urns, by the great Regency silversmith Paul Storr, drip with mermaids and mermen, sea creatures and shells. They stand on an equally effusive Bavarian rococo table, whose surface, amid the scrolls, is carved in the form of scales.
Around them, beside them, in them sit lobsters, cooked and uncooked, crayfish, snapper, King cod and a noble John Dory, and surrounding this bounty, other signs of the sea: a couple of turtles and some sandpipers, coral resting in delicate urns, freshly harvested samphire.
The play of light is everything, glittering off scales, the silver and the ice, that’s there to keep this catch cool.

In contrast to the wealth of the sea, the floral composition celebrates the wealth of the land in an abundance of blooms: larkspur, Solomon’s seal, cow parsley, fritillaria, foxgloves, roses, delphiniums, spirea, poppies, ranunculus, sweet peas and vibernum.

And surrounding it all, silks and swags and tassels with, of course, intricately embroidered seashell motifs. Surely no Herengracht merchant ever gazed upon a scene as extraordinary and lavish as this.