Küchenstilleben, Schellfisch und Rindfleisch

Lovis Corinth's Küchenstilleben, Schellfisch und Rindfleisch (Kitchen Still Life with Haddock and Beef, 1889) belongs to his series of robust kitchen still lifes — butchered meat, fresh fish, and kitchen accessories rendered with the physicality and directness that would characterize his major still life work throughout his career. These kitchen still lifes connected Corinth to the great Dutch and Flemish traditions of food and kitchen painting — Rembrandt's beef carcasses, Snyders's kitchen scenes — while bringing a specifically Prussian directness to the subject.

Corinth renders the kitchen still life with visceral directness: the specific appearance of raw meat and fresh fish — their different textures, colors, and surfaces — observed without sentimentality or aestheticization. His palette captures the specific colors of each material: the grey-white of the haddock's flesh, the red-brown of beef, the darker organ tones — set against the kitchen environment's other surfaces. His handling is confident and robust, appropriate to subject matter that celebrates physicality.