How to use this blog
This blog is a repository of good things and a companion to the book(s) Oyster, a world history.
Scroll down the menu to pick up on themes – the art is a good place to start
Latest entries scroll down but I do not post regularly and I am revising the first edition for a bumper illustrated version with Elwin Street Productions which will be oyster book of all time 
)
Riddle of the Stressor oyster boy
IT is worth comparing this Oyster Eater by the little known Henri Stresor, to the more well known work by Steen – see two posts below – louche and furtive, they share a sense of implication…
It was owned by Napoleon’s uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch (1763-1839) and was auctioned last year with a price of €1,75m – a big price for a little known aristocracy painter whose main claim to notoriety was portraits of Louis XIV…this seems too cheeky to be posed? Too detailed to be a cartoon?
Beert’s masterpiece of oysters
In 1615 Osias Beert painted this voluptuous still life of foods with oysters at the centre surrounded by other sweetmeats, the extraordinary detail and sense of lavishness pervade even the shell at the front
The oyster eater 1658
THIS masterpiece by Jan Steen dated 1658-60 is oil on canvas – laden with ambiguity. Is the girl offering oysters or furtively slipping in to clear the table and help herself? The two figures in the background suggest a bar so the viewer becomes her companion while her rich robes could either be read as courtesan or wealthy. The Ming vases, the studied seasoning allude to other explanations, again a moment caught in time but we are not sure of the plot even where we can see the drama….
The colour of Heem
BY 1655 Heem was developing in to the master of rich colour – here oysters now with fruit and notice the half drunk glass of wine in an otherwise still setting…
Doty on Heem
OYSTERS get a little overshadowed by the spiralling lemons in the much praised book on art criticsm by Mark Doty. He begins with Jan Davidsz de Heem’s Still Life with oysters and lemons dated 1638 though it could equally apply to a variation painted three years later…”there is a spectacular spiral of lemon peel, a flourish of painterly showing-off. The rind has been sliced in a single strip, and it curls in the air, resting atop theroemer; one of its coils dips inside, toward the wine, so that we see it now plainly, now veiled by the slightly gray cast of the glass. Now the pebbly yellow, as it twists through air, now the white pith that lay between that outer skin and the body of the fruit. Shadows lie in the twisting helix, in the curling hollows –like the socket of an armpit, or the hollows at the base of the neck, the twin wells of the collarbone. These are fleshy, erotic shadows, and they stand in contrast to the brilliance raking across the peel, cut so thin as to be translucent, a slice of the warmth and energy pouring into this room we’ll never see. . . . “
The book has had rare praise indeed like here :
Mark Doty has done the impossible. ..he has not only written an extended essay (read epic poem) about his encounter with a simple Dutch Still Life painting, but he has also produced what must become the definitive map for looking, seeing, studying and describing the essence of art in a way that encourages us all to return to the pursuit of beauty.
Caught in the moment, 1627
THE banketgen school – literally banquets – prided themselves on their sense of reality – here an opulent tribute to apatron’s table, symbol of new Amsterdam wealth by Pieter Cleasz dated 1627 – the date and initials are carved on the knife handle. Time is pressing – one plate of oysters have been eaten, the bread has been broken, the pie has been started…The original is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
Homage to Heda
A MODERN variation on the Heda masterpiece, this one credited to Natasha Pascal dated 2002, even the napkin is a signpost while the sheen is from pearl, the mess typically Dutch. Pascal specialises in emulating Dutch Masters out of Pittsburgh.
A 1635 tribute to time from Heda
NEWLY acquired by the Met in New York – William Claesz Heda’s 1635 Breakfast Still Life with Oysters was bequeathed by Frits and Rita Markus. Reflections are one of Heda’sd hallmarks but also the sense of the temporary as in the two fallen goblets, the eaten oysters. Time has moved on…
Herman’s oysters
CLEVER evocation of the American trick of oyster crackers, here used asa shell for a salad of oysters with apple and fennel at the much admired Zealand restaurant of Sergio Herman at Oud Sluis – www.oudsluis.nl. Oysters appear again later on at asting menu as an emulsion to sauce smoked and marinated sardines.
