Still Life of Fruit and Dead Fowl or A Stoneware jug, Fruit, and Dead Game Birds is a 1650 oil-on-panel still-life painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Harmen Steenwijck. It features dead birds which are meant to represent mortality and fruits which are meant to convey wealth. These place it between the "ontbijt" ("breakfast piece"), and explicit vanitas pieces.
Steenwijck was a still-life specialist. Here the perishable luxury fruits convey wealth, contrasting with the beer, which is the drink of the masses.
Analysis
The work is an oil-on-panel, and high and wide. It is in a private collection in Greenwich, Connecticut. In the image the table is piled high with fish, kitchen ware, fruit and birds.
The table has a dark blue cloth. On the table in the background there is a stoneware jug, and a beer glass. Directly in front of the beer glass there are two dead songbirds. In front of the jug is a dead partridge with a blood stain. Vines of red and white grapes are in front of the jug and a branch of peaches is spilling off of the front of the table. The jug and one peach both sit on a wooden box. Soft light cuts from the left on an angle glistening on the glass, jug, fruit and feathers.
Reception
Steenwijck was masterful in manipulating the primary colors. Steenwijck used pastel colors for the background items so that the featured items would be more prominent. The red of the partridge head rests against a pale yellow peach. The bulbous pears bear a similarity to the shape of the stoneware jug and the curve of the bird wings are repeated in the leaves of the fruit vines.