New Delhi, Aug 22 - Two wine bottles, a glass decanter, a measuring cup, a chunk of cheese on a tissue paper and a bunch of purple carnations -- from a distance, the composition glows like a glossy colour photograph from the cover of a lifestyle magazine.

A closer look shows a canvas base and the magical use of oil paints and brushstroke, which is almost photographic in details and finish.

The canvas Chateau Pichon Longueville by leading American contemporary still life artist Paul S. Brown is part of a cache of 15 still life paintings in the Renaissance tradition, brought to India by the 250-year-old London-based W.H. Patterson Fine Art dealer.

Classical still life drawings and Renaissance-style portraiture by both foreign and Indian artists captured the imagination of Indian buyers and viewers at the India Art Summit 2009 at the Pragati Maidan in New Delhi Aug 19-22.

The cache includes Venetian waterscapes, nude studies, floral still lives, animal portraits and traditional kitchen scenes made famous by the Dutch painters of the 16th and the 17th century.

'Still life never went away. People appreciate its technical details and find it easy to identify with objects. We as a gallery deal only in still lives and realistic landscapes and have a collection of more than 200 still lives back in London. Our oldest still life drawing dates back to the 17th century,' Glenn A. Fuller of W.H. Patterson Fine Art Dealer, who manages his family art house, told IANS.

Fuller sources his still life canvases from across Europe and the US, where according to the gallerist, 'several young contemporary artists are returning to Renaissance realism'.

Peter Wageman, says Fuller, is another such artist whose floral still life canvases are popular among Indian collectors in Britain. 'Indians like flowers in vases,' said Fuller, who sold a floral still life study at the summit to a Delhi-based collector Thursday.

The price bands of the still life canvases at Patterson range between 6,000 and 30,000 pounds.

Chennai-based Sangeeta Chopra, the secretary general of the World Crafts Council, who has a 'small collection of still lives by M.F. Husain and M. Krishnan' feels still life compositions give the viewer a sense of participation.

'They are profound and the mind can share what the artist is trying to capture,' the collector, who was in New Delhi for the art summit, told IANS.

Chopra, who has toured Venice, was riveted by a Venetian waterscape.