Clara Peeters

Presumed portrait of Clara Peeters, unknown artist, n.d.

ca. 1581 to 85  to after 1636

While definite details concerning her life are scarce, records indicate that Peeters was baptized in Antwerp in 1594 and married there in 1639. There is no indication that Peeters ever joined the Antwerp painters’ guild, but the records for many relevant years are missing.

Peeters’s earliest dated oil paintings, from 1607 and 1608, are small-scale, detailed images representing food and beverages. The skill with which this young artist executed such pictures indicates that she must have been trained by a master painter. Although there is no documentary evidence of her artistic education, scholars believe that Peeters was a student of Osias Beert, a noted still-life painter from Antwerp.

By 1612, Peeters was producing large numbers of painstakingly rendered still lifes, typically displaying groupings of valuable objects, such as elaborately decorated metal goblets, gold coins, and exotic flowers. Her compositions often show these arrangements on narrow ledges, seen from low vantage points, against dark backgrounds.

Artist Details

  • Name

    Clara Peeters

  • Birth

    Mechelen, Belgium [?], ca. 1581 to 85 

  • Death

    Ghent, Belgium [?], after 1636

  • Phonetic Spelling

    KLAH-rah PAY-terrs

  • NMWA Exhibitions

    Four Centuries of Women’s Art: The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1990–91

Works by Clara Peeters

  • Still Life of Fish and Cat

    Clara Peeters’s considerable skill at rendering naturalistic texture and detail is on full display in Still Life of Fish and Cat. In this work, she realistically depicted household abundance, without the subtle moral or subtext often associated with still lifes.

    The reddish ceramic colander holds several types of fish, including an eel. Its long, slender body forms a prominent loop that...

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    A brown ceramic colander holds several types of fish of varying sizes that lie stacked. In the foreground, a cat stands alert with its paws on a yellow fish. In front of the colander, a gleaming pewter dish holds shrimp and oyster shells. The surfaces all reflect and shine.

    Clara Peeters, Still Life of Fish and Cat, after 1620; Oil on panel, 13 1/2 x 18 1/2 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay

  • A Still Life of Lilies, Roses, Iris, Pansies, Columbine, Love-in-a-Mist, Larkspur and other Flowers in a Glass Vase on a Table Top, Flanked by a Rose and a Carnation

    This still life is one of the largest and most lavish of Clara Peeters’s flower pieces. Characteristically, the artist attempts to fool viewers’ eyes into perceiving depth by situating the bouquet on a narrow ledge. Set against a dark background, the arrangement also features illusionistic overhanging rose leaves against a dark background. Two blooms have dropped from the vase: a...

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    Realistic and detailed, the still life painting meticulously renders a variety of brightly colored flowers densely arranged in a dark round vase set against a dark background. The vase sits upon a stone ledge with two stray pink roses laying in the foreground.

    Clara Peeters, A Still Life of Lilies, Roses, Iris, Pansies, Columbine, Love-in-a-Mist, Larkspur and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase on a Table Top, Flanked by a Rose and a Carnation, ca. 1610; Oil on wood panel, 19 1/2 x 13 1/4 x 2 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; Photo by Lee Stalsworth

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