Liesbeth M. Helmus (ed.), Vis: stillevens van hollandse en vlaamse meesters, 1550-1700, Utrecht: Centraal Museum, 2004.
Vis: stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700 [Fish: still lives by Dutch and Flemish masters 1550-1700] is a magnificent catalogue to the 2004 exhibition which brought together for the first time a coherent overview of the fish still lives of the Golden Age. Sadly I wasn’t in the country to see the exhibition, but the encyclopedic catalogue itself is a rich and engaging exploration of and testimony to the historical contexts and social meaning imbued within the representation of the 16th and 17th century fish compositions, as well as the scientific taxonomy of the fish most frequently depicted in still lives (such as snoek, bream, roach, eel, crabs and crayfish)
It’s little known that fish still lives were a genre in their own right, but the book and the exhibition curated by fish still life expert curator Liesbeth M. Helmus of the Centraal Museum revitalises this slippery genre to a beautiful piscarian compendium.
Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel. The Big Fish Eat the Little Fish