Wit op wit (White on White)

A tall white enamel coffee pot, a jug marked half a litre stuffed with garlic and two pearly nautilus shells stand on cream cutwork lace, almost without colour. White on white is one of the hardest exercises in painting, the whole picture living in faint shifts of warm against cool, while the shells glow with mother-of-pearl. Wiedijk at his most quietly virtuosic.