Two Walnuts Adriaen Coorte

Adriaen Coorte worked as a painter of still lifes in the Dutch city of Middelburg, and was regarded by his contemporaries as a solitary master. The subdued, objective manner of depiction in his small paintings is substantially different from the lush decorativeness of his other types of fruit and flower still lifes. In his distinctive works he deployed the same compositional solution: on a stone slab, against a dark background, he placed a single type of fruit, vegetable or other crop, or sometimes a seashell. In this picture, after meticulous observation, he painted two walnuts in minute detail using delicate brushstrokes: simplified to the extreme, this composition captures the most intimate and metaphysically profound silence and essence of existence.