James Zar Still Life with Iridescent Vessel, Copper Bowl & Grapes — Oil on View Watchlist >
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Lot # F778
System ID # 30341335
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James Zar Still Life with Iridescent Vessel, Copper Bowl & Grapes — Oil on
A dark-ground still life by American realist painter James Zar (b. 1950), built on the visual grammar of the seventeenth-century Northern European masters — de Heem, van Beyeren, the Utrecht school — but rendered with Zar's own textural, palette-knife surface. The composition centers on a tall iridescent ceramic vessel with a dark-glazed neck seated on a copper-toned base, its lustrous body catching pale rose, lavender, and green highlights against a deep umber ground. A gilded copper bowl of grapes, a single golden apple, scattered clusters on sprigs of herb, and a heavy cluster of dark grapes spilling over the table edge complete the arrangement. The draped cloth carries a richly worked border in orange and teal, painted in loose, confident strokes that read as embroidery from a distance.
The painting is signed "Zar" in red at lower right in the artist's characteristic compressed, angular mark, and again on the verso, where the board is also notated "24 x 18." Zar's still lifes trade the mortality rhetoric of classical vanitas for a study of pure presence — objects chosen for their formal weight and the way light moves across ceramic, copper, and fruit. His work has shown in galleries across the American West and holds a loyal secondary-market following among collectors of contemporary realist painting. Presented in a carved wood and plaster frame with scrolling foliate relief.
About the Artist
James Zar (b. 1950) is an American painter working in the disciplined middle ground between academic realism and surrealist sensibility. Classically trained and shaped by the Northern European still-life tradition, he composes arrangements — ceramics, shells, fruit, insects — with a jeweler's precision, lit and staged for their formal properties as much as their symbolic resonance. The red "Zar" signature appears consistently across his known production.
CONDITION
Very Good. The painted surface presents cleanly with strong color and intact impasto. The wood and plaster frame is scuffed with chips to the corners, consistent with age and handling.
DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS
- Overall (framed): 28 1/4" H × 22 1/4" W × 1 1/4" D
- Visible (sight): 23 1/2" H × 17 1/2" W
- Medium: Oil on Masonite
- Signed: "Zar" in red, lower right; signed again verso
- Verso notation: "24 x 18"
- Frame: Carved wood and plaster
