The painting of Still Life

Does anyone else find this an odd terminology? At school I used to think… well It’s “still” but where does the “life” bit come in? It’s mainly lifeless stuff… things, fruit and veg, which I didn’t think of as “life”…

Now I see that these bottles, baskets, jars, fruit, with cloth, wood, and stone surroundings, speak of our short years of life perhaps more than the trees, and fields of landscape: They are the things that separate us out, from the world of flora and fauna. They tell the tale of our short lives and what’s been important to us as sure as any journal.

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