Still Lifes of Cthulhu

Starting in the Middle Ages and continuing through today, the still life has been a popular genre of painting, though it was placed at the bottom of the hierarchy in terms of importance or distinction. Perhaps because it was considered such a low art form, it opened the mind to suggestion.

Many of the great European painters, after spending hours painting what they thought were mundane objects, realized, to their great horror, that they had painted a grotesque vanitas. A horrible creature stared out at them from the canvas.

They tried to destroy the painting, but to no avail. If tried to paint over it, the paint just ran off the canvas. If they tried to destroy the painting with a knife or hammer, the instrument just bounced off the canvas. If they cast the painting into the fire, they found it intact in the ashes. If they buried it in the ground, it was back on the easel the next morning. They did not dare to throw it away lest someone find it and recognize who had painted it.

To their relief, members of a secret society called "The Cult" offered to take the painting off their hands and promised to tell no one where it had come from. Recently this collection of paintings was donated by an anonymous benefactor to the Arkham Art Gallery. Strangely, no paintings of this kind are known to have been painted since 1928…