A Convenient Masterpiece: Oslo Unearths a Forgotten Pioneer for its Feminist Exhibition

Norway's cultural sector is often characterised by an eagerness to project progressive values and embark on quests for ideological correction. The National Museum of Norway in Oslo recently struck narrative gold in its own storage rooms, officially reattributing an anonymous 17th-century still life to Clara Peeters, a pioneering Flemish baroque artist. The timing of this discovery is remarkably convenient, occurring just as the museum prepares a major exhibition dedicated to female painters.

The artwork, Still Life with Small Game and Grapes on a Gilded Tazza, dates to around 1620. It depicts dead birds alongside hazelnuts, apricots, a fly, and grapes. The museum originally believed the piece belonged to Ambrosius Brueghel of the Antwerp painting dynasty. By the early twentieth century, curators downgraded the creator to an anonymous status and banished the panel to the archives. It sat there until 2022, when curator Cynthia Osiecki suspected the brushwork belonged to Peeters, an artist born around 1594 who helped define the Northern European still life genre.

Attributing centuries-old art is an inexact science, particularly when the usual markers are absent. Peeters typically signed her canvases and painted tiny self-portraits into the reflections of objects, yet the Oslo painting lacks both. Conveniently, the bottom edge of the wooden panel, where she usually left her signature, happens to have been eaten away by woodworms.

With the signature missing and old varnish obscuring the grapes into vague shapes that Osiecki theorises might be remnants of the artist's mirrored silhouette, the curator relied on structural clues. The wood panel originated from a supplier Peeters frequented. Additionally, the composition mirrors her verified works held in institutions like the Prado in Madrid and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

This newly minted Peeters will serve as a centrepiece for the Woman Painter exhibition opening in Oslo on October 8. The showcase gathers works from nineteen female artists active between 1550 and 1650, putting Peeters alongside Artemisia Gentileschi, Lavinia Fontana, and Judith Leyster. For a Norwegian cultural establishment eager to project progressive values, rescuing a forgotten female genius from the basement is an irresistible narrative. Exhibition director Nora Ceciliedatter Nerdrum claimed the reattributed work demonstrates how art history is expanding to include women whose work has been lost or ignored.

The thematic core of the work adds a layer of irony to its new institutional purpose. Peeters designed her still lifes to emphasise the brevity of mortal existence, using freshly killed birds and decaying grapes as moral warnings against worldly vanity. Today, that stark warning against materialism is being leveraged by a modern art history establishment that is rapidly scouring its storage facilities to reclassify anonymous works under female names.

Written by Christiane Hofreiter christiane.hofreiter@alpineweekly.com