Willem Kalf Biography

(born. 1622, Rotterdam                                                                                                           died . 1693, Amsterdam)
Kalf was a Dutch painter, one of the most celebrated of all sill-life painters. In 1642-46 Kalf worked in Paris. On his return to the Netherlands Kalf lived in Hoorn and then in 1653 settled in Amsterdam. Kalf early paintings were modest kitchen and courtyard scenes, but he soon became the outstanding exponent of a type of still-life in which fruit and precious objects - porcelain, oriental rugs, Venetian glass - are arranged in grand Baroque displays. Willem Kalf paintings have often been compared with those of Vermeer because of his masterly handling of texture and his ability to manipulate warm and cool colours (Willem Kalf frequently contrasts the reddish browns in a carpet with the yellow of a peeled lemon and the blue and white of porcelain).