This week’s work of art is by the Golden Age Dutch artist Pieter van Anraadt. He’s mostly known for painting historical subjects and portraits, but he has done some still lifes, such as this one: Still Life with Earthenware Jug, painted around 1658.

One description of the painting is the following:

Beer drinking has often been associated with smoking, as many still lifes and genre scenes of the seventeenth century reveal. This still life by Pieter van Anraadt, who was better known as a portrait painter in Deventer, is a good example of a painting which unites these two pleasures. It shows a jug and a glass of beer on a table; nearby are several clay pipes and some tobacco on a tray, and a brazier. The simplicity of the scene and the perfectly balanced triangular-shaped composition is offset by the jumble of pipes forming a mesh of crossed lines.

You can read van Anraadt’s biography at Wikipedia or at the Mauritshuis, the museum where the painting hangs. There are also a few links to other works, such as ArtCyclopedia, and ArtNet.