Art in the field

Benjamin Blake's game-larder scenes became a marker of wealth in the early 19th century, says

- Janet Menzies

WHAT IS a status symbol? When Scottish actor Ewan McGregor told an incredulous Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear that his everyday car was a Toyota Prius, we knew Clarkson had been comprehensively outplayed. In the complex world of cool, the most surprising items can convey your style and wealth, and during the early 19th century, having a Benjamin Blake painting of a game larder hanging on the wall meant you had arrived.

It was the Dutch who first became obsessed with the game-larder genre in the 17th century. Still-life oils of flowers and fruit were produced by the Dutch masters. Equally popular were paintings of hares, partridges and even swans, hanging in the game larder and waiting to be made ready for the feast. Naturally, no one looking at this art in the state rooms of the house would ever set foot below to see the messy business of food preparation, so the painting became the symbol by which hosts reassured the visitor of mutual wealth.