Willem Kalf (1619 - 1693). Willem Kalf was one of the most prominent Dutch still-life painters of the 17th century, the Dutch Golden Age. We first get acquainted with Willem Kalf through Arnold Houbraken, in his Groot Schilderboek, who speaks very highly of him. In fact, Kalf was a highly regarded and celebrated artist during his own lifetime. This was due to his extensive art knowledge and what we gain from Houbraken, his affable personality. His claim to fame now rests mostly on his mature still lifes, pronkstilleven in Dutch, which feature the most exotic and luxurious objects. This can be seen in for example, Still life with nautilus beaker and porcelain lidded bowl from 1662, which became an iconic piece of western art. There is little known about Willem Kalf's life, for there is minimal documentation on Kalf himself. What is known is mainly derived from archival research, documents, and other sources which link him to specific times, places, and people, but there are no direct writings on him, except Houbraken and a small piece by Gerard de Lairesse. Willem Kalf was born in Rotterdam in a house at the Hoogstraat, in 1619. He was baptized the same year in the church of Saint Lawrence. He was the son of Machtelt Gerrits and Jan Jansz. Kalf, a wealthy cloth merchant and member of the Rotterdam council who, just before he died in 1625, got caught in a scandal. Willem Kalf was only six years old at the time his father died. He remained in Rotterdam with his mother and started showing interest in painting when he was roughly 18 years old. His mother died shortly after that in 1638, after which Willem left his hometown for The Hague before he moved to Paris around 1641. After his apprenticeship in the Netherlands, Willem Kalf moved to Paris around 1641, to the circle of the Flemish artists in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, where he presumably remained until the autumn of 1646. Here he mainly painted French Interiors, small kitchens, and barns. This is where Kalf's earliest period begins, usually called his French or Parisian period.Proof for Kalf's stay in Paris was given by Van Gelder, in an episode in the life history of the Antwerp resident Philips Vleugels, written down by his son Nicolaas and kept in the library of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.Nicolaas writes about Vleugels first meeting with Kalf and various other artists who were living in a house called La Chasse, at the other end of la rue du Sepulcre joining la rue du Four; Nicolaas describes it as the kind of refuge for painters from his country. He continues, Most of these painters who were there were skilful; there was Nicasius, Van Boucle, Fouquiers, Calf, etc. Kalf's farm interiors were very popular among his fellow artists and he was therefore often copied, not just in the 17th century. Kalf's interiors were highly priced in France well into the 18th century. Painters such as Lancret, Chardin, and Francois Boucher owned his paintings and even reworked some of them. For example, Kalf's painting, Interior of a rustic kitchen, now located in the Louvre, was once acquired by Francois Boucher during his trip to the Netherlands in 1766. The fact that Willem Kalf acquired great fame in Paris was not only due to the enormous amount of genre scenes he painted. While he was working in Paris, Kalf developed a new genre of painting that would soon gain popularity not only within France; his still-life paintings. In October 1646 Kalf had returned to Rotterdam, but he did not stay there, because 5 years later his name appears in the marriage book for the city of Hoorn. The book shows that on October 22, 1651, Willem Janszoon Kalf, young companion from Rotterdam, and Cornelia Pluvier, young daughter of Vollenhoven, came to be married. The couple's marriage was celebrated by a verse by Vondel; his poem includes a brief description of Kalf's pronk still life paintings. Cornelia Pluvier was a very charming poet, calligrapher and engraver of glass. Her charms caught the attention of Constantijn Huygens, the stadholders secretary, who owned one of her engraved roemers. Apart from his marriage to Cornelia, it appears surprising a painter such as Willem Kalf would have established himself in Hoorn for there was no other well-known colleague situated there, apart from Jacob Waben with whose work that of Kalf certainly has no connection. It is also soon after his marriage that Willem van Kalf, together with his wife, moves to Amsterdam where he and his wife would have 4 children. He would remain in Amsterdam until his death in 1693. A notarial document, in which Kalf places the authenticity of a painting by Paulus Bril, locates Kalf in Amsterdam in 1653. And in 1654, not long after his marriage, Willem Kalf is mentioned as a member of the Saint Luke's Guild in Amsterdam. Amsterdam was a thriving city, filled with painters, art dealers, and buyers at the time Willem Kalf came to live there.