Full title | The Four Elements: Water |
---|---|
Artist | Joachim Beuckelaer |
Artist dates | probably about 1535; died 1575 |
Series | The Four Elements |
Date made | 1569 |
Medium and support | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 158.1 × 214.9 cm |
Inscription summary | Signed; Dated |
Acquisition credit | Bought, 2001 |
Inventory number | NG6586 |
Location | Room 15 |
Art route(s) | B |
Collection | Main Collection |
A plethora of piscine produce is presented to us: fish of all kinds are piled in baskets, tumble over the edges of platters or slip from the stallholder’s grasp – there are even mussel shells scattered on the floor. The two vendors ignore their prospective clients and look directly at us, as if asking us to buy. This is one of four large pictures in the National Gallery’s collection in which the four elements – earth, air, fire and water – are represented as food.
Although it looks like a contemporary scene, something else is going on too. Through the arch in the middle you can see a ship with fishermen hauling in their nets. One man wades through the water towards a figure on the shore. This is the miraculous draught of fishes, when Christ, risen from the dead, appeared to his apostles and told them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat. They pulled in a multitude of fish.
A plethora of piscine produce is presented to us: fish of all kinds are piled in baskets, tumble over the edges of platters or slip from the stallholder’s grasp. On the far left is an earthenware dish of sprats and/or immature herrings; in front of the woman in the red hat is a large wooden platter containing three carp, two pike and two tench. She rests her arm on a tub of plaice. In front of the man is a basket of large cod and in the lower right corner an eviscerated ray lies on an earthenware platter. Other dishes contain herrings, silver bream, a rudd and perch. There are even mussel shells scattered on the floor.
The two vendors, who ignore their clients and look directly at us, seem to be selling different kinds of fish. The woman specialises in freshwater fish, the man – who has obviously been chopping up produce with the large knife resting on the block behind his arm – in sea fish. The five women behind are customers. Some are servants: one balances a tray of cheese wrapped in white clothes on her head, another a brass(?) vessel. Two, evidently of higher rank, wear black mantles.
Although it looks like a contemporary scene – the people are dressed in sixteenth-century clothes, and on the left they walk up and down a street lined with Renaissance buildings, including the Rode Poort, or Red Gate, of Antwerp – something else is going on too. Through the arch in the middle you can see a ship with fishermen hauling in their nets. One man wades through the water towards a figure on the shore. The water is the Sea of Galilee and this is the miraculous draught of fishes (Luke 5: 4–11). Christ, risen from the dead, appeared to his apostles, who had had an unsuccessful night’s fishing. He told them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat and they pulled in a multitude of fish.
This is one of four large pictures in which the four elements – earth, air, fire and water – are represented as food, with biblical scenes in the background. The artist, Joachim Beuckelaer, specialised in market and kitchen scenes with elaborate displays of food. He has signed, monogrammed and dated the picture on the edge of the table on the left of the basket of cod: Joahim buekeleer/15.IB.69.
Beuckelaer often reused figures and settings, although rarely repeated them exactly. The ray recurs in his Fish Market with the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. Old women similar to the one on the left appear in other paintings, for example in the Market Square with the Calling of Matthew (Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples), dated 1566. He perhaps used himself as a model for the male fish seller – this face reappears in several of his pictures. A similar view down the Rodestraat, which may well have been visible from his workshop, appears in his Couple selling Poultry of 1569 (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples).
Beuckelaer’s ability as a painter is perhaps most apparent in this picture. He has painted very quickly, usually thinly and with remarkable economy. With surprising boldness he has laid in the paint with broad brushstrokes and was not nervous of extreme contrasts of tone. The three gutted herring in the top right corner would not look out of place in paintings by Manet or Cézanne.
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The Four Elements
Packed with fish, fruit, vegetables, birds and animals, these four big pictures are like giant stage sets, teeming with life. Although superficially market and kitchen scenes, the different types of food represent the four elements: vegetables for earth, fish for water, poultry for air and game for fire. In the backgrounds are biblical scenes.
Beuckelaer has created an impression of great abundance and variety, although the foods shown were readily available to ordinary Netherlanders for most of the sixteenth century. However, these pictures were painted at a time of political and religious repression and severe economic recession. They perhaps show a remembered golden age, when food was plentiful.
The group may well have been commissioned in Antwerp by a foreigner, probably the vastly wealthy and cultured Fernão Ximenes, Consul for the Portuguese Nation. By 1884 the paintings were in Florence, in the Palazzo Panciatichi-Ximenes d'Aragona.
Packed with fish, fruit, vegetables, birds and animals, these four big pictures are like giant stage sets, teeming with life. The boundaries between painting and reality seem to have dissolved – people look directly out at us, offering us a plethora of produce which seems in danger of tumbling out into the real world. Although superficially market and kitchen scenes, the different types of food represent the four elements: vegetables for earth, fish for water, poultry for air and game for fire. In the backgrounds are biblical scenes.
Although Joachim Beuckelaer has created an impression of great abundance and variety, the foods shown were readily available to ordinary Netherlanders for most of the sixteenth century. However, these pictures were painted at a time of cruel political and religious repression and severe economic recession. Terrible weather, poor harvests, wars and high taxes combined to make life almost unendurable. They perhaps show a remembered golden age, when food was plentiful. Fascinatingly, he makes no reference to payment in any of the pictures.
All four compositions are constructed in the same way, with two people at the front surrounded by still lifes heaped on baskets, barrows, tables, stools and shelves. In the background are other groups – customers, cooks and passers-by – and right at the back are religious scenes. The level and accuracy of detail makes us feel that the images are completely credible, although the compositions are contrived and there’s no logic to the space: landscapes are not continuous, perspectives run in different directions and the interior in The Four Elements: Fire is oddly distorted. The colours fade as they recede, helping clarify the complicated spatial arrangements.
Beuckelaer specialised in elaborate displays of food, and these paintings are the culmination of themes he explored in other pictures. The same details recur in many of his paintings, although he rarely repeated the same setting or figure exactly, instead enlarging, reducing and reversing them as he wished. He clearly kept an archive of sketches, but technical investigations have shown that the underdrawing was done freehand, not copied mechanically. He also worked constantly from life: he had several models whom he used frequently and kept a wardrobe of clothes in which to dress them. It seems that for common objects, birds and animals, Beuckelaer referred to the real thing as well as sketches, improvising and making variations on themes in his archives. For more unusual objects – such as the artichokes in The Four Elements: Earth – he followed his preliminary studies more faithfully.
The pictures are painted on canvas and are variously dated 1569 or 1570. Beuckelaer normally painted on panel but would have used canvas for large pictures that were to be exported. This group may well have been commissioned in Antwerp by a foreigner, probably Fernão Ximenes, one of the deputies of the Portugese Consul and an art collector and bibliophile. Fernão must have been well aware that easily portable paintings on canvas were preferable to large, heavy panels: he‘d had to leave Antwerp in a hurry during the iconoclast riots in 1564. By 1884 the paintings were in Florence, in the Palazzo Panciatichi-Ximenes d’Aragona.
The appearance of all four pictures has been seriously affected by the deterioration of an unstable blue pigment called smalt, which Beuckelaer used for skies and garments. The skies are now greyish-cream not blue, and clothes were originally a variety of purples and blues.



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