Still Life with Cheeses, Artichoke, and Cherries

Being a woman painter in the 17th century was not easy,  you could not go on your own to a workshop to become a painter, since it was unthinkable for young women to share daily life with other boys.

Although Clara Peeters became one of the great painters, I feel like a pioneer artist in the field of still life and one of the few women who dedicated herself to painting in Europe in the Modern Age. 

Considered one of the initiators of still life in the south of the Netherlands, she was characterized by the use of hidden self-portraiture in still-life objects, you can find her self-portraits reflected in jugs or mirrors, something that many other artists would copy.  She is also credited with introducing the “breakfast piece”, a still life showing the ingredients of a simple, everyday meal, in the tradition of Dutch painting.

It deserves a second, closer look that will reveal its daring and bravery, a totally modern gesture for its time.