Interiors by Design: Kitchens

In all but the most basic of houses, food has been prepared in a more-or-less dedicated room, the kitchen, which has been curiously far less popular as a motif for domestic interiors. Here’s a selection of the more interesting and unusual examples from houses great to apartments small.

Marten van Cleve (1527-1581) (studio of), Kitchen Interior (c 1565), oil on panel, 81 x 116 cm, Skoklosters slott, Håbo, Sweden. Wikimedia Commons.

The studio of Marten van Cleve demonstrated at the outset why views of the Kitchen Interior (c 1565) are relatively uncommon. This kitchen for a large mansion isn’t the sort of place that would welcome an artist complete with easel, paints and brushes. They’d get in the way of the many household servants busy preparing the next meal, and those engaged in other activities, such as the nurse at the lower right who’s feeding a baby. There’s even a man brandishing a knife in the middle of it all.

This is an unusual reversal of the more popular view of a family eating, with a glimpse at the left into the dining room where the family is seen at the table.

Joachim Beuckelaer (c 1533–1575), The Four Elements: Fire. A Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary in the Background (1570), oil on canvas, 157.5 x 215.5 cm, The National Gallery, London. Wikimedia Commons.

In 1570, Joachim Beuckelaer incorporated this well-known Gospel story with an early domestic interior in A Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary in the Background, the painting representing fire in his Four Elements series. The dining room is again shown through a doorway, and the whole painting has the exaggerated perspective you might have expected from an image in a camera obscura.

Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), Kitchen Scene (The Kitchen Maid, The Mulatto Woman) (c 1620) [15], oil on canvas, 55.9 x 104 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Wikimedia Commons.

Among Diego Velázquez’ early bodegone concerned with eating is this spartan Kitchen Scene, variously known as The Kitchen Maid or The Mulatto Woman, from about 1620. All the implements shown are spotless and don’t appear to be in use, even the mortar and pestle at the far right.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682) The Angels’ Kitchen (1646), oil on canvas, 180 x 450 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Murillo’s marvellous panorama of The Angels’ Kitchen (1646), also known as The Levitation of Saint Giles, is an unusual fusion of the miraculously spiritual with the everyday environment of the working kitchen. At the left, two visitors are brought in to see the extraordinary events taking place in the kitchen: one monk, traditionally thought to be Saint Giles, is levitating by the power of ‘the spirit’. At the right, four full-size winged angels and three smaller angels are engaged in various kitchen tasks, including preparation of food.

Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), The Milkmaid (c 1660), oil on canvas, 45.5 x 41 cm, The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.

In Vermeer’s Milkmaid from about 1660, a woman servant, kitchen or house maid, is preparing a light meal under the window to one side of the kitchen. She’s pouring milk from a jug, beside a tabletop with bread. In the left foreground the bread and pots rest on a folded Dutch octagonal table, covered with a mid-blue cloth. A wicker basket of bread is nearest the viewer, broken and smaller pieces of different types of bread behind and towards the woman, in the centre. Behind the bread is a dark blue studded mug with pewter lid, and just in front of the woman (to the right of the mug) a brown earthenware ‘Dutch oven’ pot into which the milk is being poured. An ultramarine blue cloth (matching the woman’s apron) rests at the edge of the table.

The woman, seen in three-quarter view, wears working dress: a stiff, white linen cap, a yellow jacket laced at the front, a brilliant ultramarine blue apron, and a dull red skirt underneath. Her right hand holds the handle of a brown earthenware pitcher, which she supports from below with her left hand. Her work sleeves are pushed up to lay both her weathered forearms bare to the elbow. Her strong-featured face and eyes are cast down, watching the milk as it runs into the pot.

Artist not known, Faust’s Rejuvenation (The Witch’s Kitchen) (date not known), oil on canvas, 57 x 70 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

In Goethe’s play Faust a “witch’s kitchen” is the scene for Faust’s Rejuvenation (The Witch’s Kitchen) in this undated and anonymous painting. Mephistopheles watches at the right as the sceptical Faust stands inside the witch’s magic circle.

Maximilien Luce (1858–1941), A Kitchen (1888-89), oil on canvas, 65.1 x 54 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

A Kitchen is one of Maximilien Luce’s early Divisionist paintings, dating from 1888-89. It’s an unusual motif, showing domestic servants at work in the kitchen of a large bourgeois house. Like many of his paintings, it’s also an insightful social record.

Jehan Georges Vibert (1840–1902), The Marvelous Sauce (c 1890), oil on panel, 63.5 x 81.2 cm, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Jehan Georges Vibert’s meticulously realist and academic painting of The Marvelous Sauce from about 1890 is another oddity. One of a series of lightly anti-clerical paintings featuring a cardinal, it shows its rotund hero wearing an apron and tasting a sauce with his chef in a palatial kitchen. Behind them is an abundance of fresh food, and an extensive set of fine pots and pans.

Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), La Cuisinière au fourneau (The Cook at the Stove) (1892), oil on panel, 33 x 41 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Félix Vallotton’s The Cook at the Stove is a domestic interior drawn from Naturalism, and features the artist’s partner Hélène Chatenay as its model. She stands at the solid-top range in a kitchen strangely almost devoid of the one thing that kitchens are for, food. The only edible item visible is a bunch of onions suspended in mid-air. Everything else, the chairs, pots and pans, and the range, are spotless as if they have never been used, and appear unnatural.

Spencer Gore (1878–1914), The Gas Cooker (1913), oil on canvas, 73 x 36.8 cm, The Tate Gallery (Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1962), London. © The Tate Gallery and Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gore-the-gas-cooker-t00496

As a member of the Camden Town Group during the pre-war years in Britain, Spencer Gore painted mundane domestic interiors including The Gas Cooker (1913). This shows his wife Mollie in the tiny kitchen of their flat in Houghton Place in London.