Clara Peeters, Still Life of Fish and Cat, unknown date. Oil on panel. 13 ½ x 18 ½ inches (34 x 47 cm). National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, USA. Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay

Photograph of Wallace F. Holladay and Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, courtesy of Isacson Studios Ltd., Potomac, MD, USA

An important pioneer in the field of still-life painting, Clara Peeters (ca. 1589 – ca. 1657) is the only Flemish woman known to have specialized in such pictures as early as the first decade of the seventeenth century. 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 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, she was producing large numbers of painstakingly rendered still-lifes, typically displaying a group of valuable objects (elaborately decorated metal goblets, gold coins, exotic flowers) on a narrow ledge, as seen from a low vantage point and against a dark background.

Clara Peeters commands a special place in the history of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.  The museum’s founders, Wilhelmina Cole and Wallace F. Holladay began collecting art in the 1960s for their Washington, DC home.  The Holladays’ first purchase of artwork together cost $100 at a high school sale, but soon they were touring museums and galleries all over Europe for new acquisitions.  In the beginning, Mrs. Holladay bemoaned the lack of focus in her art collection, but in 1966, at a gallery in Vienna, the Holladays came across a painting that would change their lives forever.  A modest sixteenth century Flemish still-life of goblets, coins, and tulips impressed them very much. They were doubly impressed several days later, when, at the Prado in Madrid, they saw another painting by the same artist, Clara Peeters.

Mrs. Holladay’s curiosity was piqued. After returning to Washington, DC, she consulted all of her usual art reference books, looking for information on the elusive Clara Peeters. Not even the standard art history textbook at the time, H. W. Janson’s History of Art mentioned her, or any woman artist for that matter. Mrs. Holladay found the omission shocking. From that point forward, the Holladays focused their financial and aesthetic energy toward collecting and rediscovering art by women.  Ultimately, the Holladays acquired Peeter’s undated painting, Still Life of Fish and Cat and donated it to the museum as part of its core collection.