Schoen - Composition

 (Vincent van Gogh, Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, 1888, oil)

 (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge, 1603, oil)

 (Ambrosius Bosschaert, Dead Frog with Flies, 1630, oil on copper)

There is a dead frog on its back with three flies crawling next to it and one buzzes in the air above it. The frog seems to be recently dead with no signs of decomposition visible. I couldn’t find any sort of artist statement on this painting; however, I’m assuming Bosschaert was going against the grain of his time. Most of the still lives I found depicted fruit or flowers, pleasant things. Bosschaert’s Dead Frog jumped out at me simply because it is a dead frog on a counter. It is definitely unpleasant to look at for a moment, let alone the hours spent painting this. I think the artist wanted to make a statement about what could be put in a still life, not just pretty things, but ugly things as well. Although, it is not the middle of the painting, my focus keeps coming back to the one, black eye. There is no background, it is just a wall, but the frog is grounded on a counter that looks eerily like a slab. Values are varied in the painting, a square frame is used, and there are five objects total in the piece (an odd number). Bosschaert might have intended the audience to be the artist community, because of the point I previously mentioned.