Painting number 4, detail at right, is complete. This one is larger than the first 3 and measures 26×30. Willem Kalf has long been one of my favorite Dutch artists, and sadly there are no paintings by him in this exhibit. However there is a lovely one in the Portland Art Museum collection.
The approach for this painting was to pattern the composition after a Kalf painting, but the color palette from a painting in the Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art. Using this idea was doubly beneficial, especially enabling me to achieve the sparkling flecks of juicy color and light in the highlights of metal objects, one of my favorite techniques. This is done by adding lots of medium to the paint and using the "wet into wet" technique, meaning you put wet paint right into areas of paint that are still wet.
The vermilion is from the same red tones in the coat of Issac in the painting by Govert Flinck. In this piece I have turned the palette of a figurative painting into a still life, which was very challenging indeed.
So, what is it you like about Kalf? I don’t know anything about him.