Schooten Floris Gerritsz. van

Not much is known about his life. He worked in Haarlem between 1605 and 1655, where he got married in 1612.

He painted market and kitchen scenes, and still lifes. Large-scale market scenes were introduced by Pieter Aerten and Gioakim Joachim Beuckelaer. In fact, the former’s sons, Pieter and Aert, and their followers promoted them in Amsterdam and Haarlem, where they became a very popular genre. The work of van Schooten is characterized by its lack of motion, while in most of the painters who worked on this subject there is an obvious effort to capture the movement of the figures in space. From 1620, however, he introduced a perspectival opening of the setting to other rooms or landscapes.

Apart from his depictions of market or kitchen settings, in which a religious scene was often incorporated, as part of the daily life in Holland, the artists also depicted the “morning” theme, without any figures in the painting. A number of simple still lifes of a few kitchen utensils was made before 1630. This kind of composition eventually became more sophisticated, encompassing tablecloths, elaborate metal ware, and dishes of cheese, ham, fruit.