Still Life with Ham*
Some say that it is very important to paint what you love. This is perhaps why, though French artist Phillippe Rousseau started out his career with landscapes of Normandy, he ultimately gravitated toward still life pieces.
This revealing oil painting by Rousseau is believed to have been painted in the 1870s and features many elements that would have been very contemporaneous to that period**. In this work the artist combines his appreciation for eighteenth century still life artists such as Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and Anne Vallayer-Coster with his devotion to cured pork.
Rousseau signed this painting by putting his name on the envelope, which was a cute touch. He also added bits of congealed fat scattered on the plate around the ham which, while detail-oriented, strikes one as being not so much “cute” as gratuitous.
This painting has spent most of its life in private collections. This is an excellent indication that there truly is a market for anything. It wasn’t until the early ‘80s that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York acquired the Ham and found somewhere to put it***. The MMA, where this painting is currently housed, has described the painting’s centerpiece as “succulent” and I think that they know what they’re talking about. A good deal of effort, almost evangelical in its enthusiasm, has gone into making the ham look appetizing****.
During the period in which Rousseau was painting, a lot of his contemporaries in the same tradition struggled to generate proper incomes and lived in poverty. By contrast, Rousseau had a regular queue of wealthy persons eager to provide him with patronage. The result of this was that he led a very comfortable existence, and I think it shows.
*Perhaps also known as Le déjeuner or “the lunch”.
**Such as gluttony, for example.
***My money is on the cafeteria. It would get your guests in precisely the right sort of mood.
****For comparison, you should see how Rousseau painted asparagus.