Lot Essay
Ambrosius Bosschaert I, Jan Brueghel I, Jacques de Gheyn II and Roelandt Savery are considered the founders of Netherlandish still life painting during the first years of the seventeenth century. Indeed, Ambrosius Bosschaert was the head and teacher of a dynasty of fruit and flower painters, and his influence on the development of this genre cannot be underestimated.
Bosschaert's paintings are executed in the tradition of miniaturists, with no Baroque chiaroscuro and with great symmetry of design. Every bloom is given equal treatment and lighting within the confines of a strictly symmetrical arrangement composed along a central axis. Bosschaert's patience is legendary and it is well known that bouquets were seldom, if ever, painted from life. They were concocted from a number of independant studies, thus often showing blossoms which bloom at different seasons of the year. L.J. Bol compares Bosschaert's bouquets to contemporary Dutch group portraits, describing the flowers as similar to '...individual portraits placed beside and above each other, each being given its full pound of recognizability. No single one is subordinated, or sacrificed for the sake of the composition, lighting, atmosphere, or tonality....A striving after lucidity and exactitude sometimes leads, with Bosschaert, to hyper-realism: no flower is thus left in the shadow, every corolla emerges clear and radiant, in its own local color, in the same "impartial" light. All subjects appear simultaneously in the foreground, in a unity of time, place and "action" enforced by the painter...' (Bol, op. cit., p. 20).
Some flowers in the present painting are specific to the earliest known Dutch floral still life paintings, like the 'Goudlakense' Crocus. The Xestria shell is not a species from the sea, but from a snail living in the trees in Celebes and New Guinea.
Datable circa 1606, the present painting is therefore one of the earliest known works by Ambrosius Bosschaert I, and one of the earliest Dutch flower pieces in general. The first dated flower piece by Bosschaert, from 1605, shows a similar tulip, lily, rose, forget-me-not, magpie moth, caterpillar and fly and three more identical species (private collection, copper, 18.4 x 14.6 cm.; see the catalogue of the exhibition, Masters from Middelburg, Waterman, Amsterdam, 1984, pp. 120-1, no. 2). Most of these species occur again in other early works until 1610, some only until 1607, for example, the crocus and lily, the bumble bee and the magpie moth, as well as the roemer. Two paintings dated 1606 and four paintings dated 1607 have several species in common with the present painting. Half of the species in the present lot occur again in a painting of 1606 in the Cleveland Museum of Art (Inv. no. 60.108), some in the same place within that composition; for example, the rose leaves lower left and the striped columbine lower right. The composition is also very closely related to a painting of 1607 formerly with John Mitchell and Son, London (see the catalogue of the exhibition, The Mauritshuis in Bloom, The Hague, 1992, p. 62, no. 6), where the magpie moth has been painted in reverse. An identical pink rose, Siberian iris and fly may be seen in one of the most well-known flower pieces by Bosschaert, a work of 1609 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Bosschaert's paintings are executed in the tradition of miniaturists, with no Baroque chiaroscuro and with great symmetry of design. Every bloom is given equal treatment and lighting within the confines of a strictly symmetrical arrangement composed along a central axis. Bosschaert's patience is legendary and it is well known that bouquets were seldom, if ever, painted from life. They were concocted from a number of independant studies, thus often showing blossoms which bloom at different seasons of the year. L.J. Bol compares Bosschaert's bouquets to contemporary Dutch group portraits, describing the flowers as similar to '...individual portraits placed beside and above each other, each being given its full pound of recognizability. No single one is subordinated, or sacrificed for the sake of the composition, lighting, atmosphere, or tonality....A striving after lucidity and exactitude sometimes leads, with Bosschaert, to hyper-realism: no flower is thus left in the shadow, every corolla emerges clear and radiant, in its own local color, in the same "impartial" light. All subjects appear simultaneously in the foreground, in a unity of time, place and "action" enforced by the painter...' (Bol, op. cit., p. 20).
Some flowers in the present painting are specific to the earliest known Dutch floral still life paintings, like the 'Goudlakense' Crocus. The Xestria shell is not a species from the sea, but from a snail living in the trees in Celebes and New Guinea.
Datable circa 1606, the present painting is therefore one of the earliest known works by Ambrosius Bosschaert I, and one of the earliest Dutch flower pieces in general. The first dated flower piece by Bosschaert, from 1605, shows a similar tulip, lily, rose, forget-me-not, magpie moth, caterpillar and fly and three more identical species (private collection, copper, 18.4 x 14.6 cm.; see the catalogue of the exhibition, Masters from Middelburg, Waterman, Amsterdam, 1984, pp. 120-1, no. 2). Most of these species occur again in other early works until 1610, some only until 1607, for example, the crocus and lily, the bumble bee and the magpie moth, as well as the roemer. Two paintings dated 1606 and four paintings dated 1607 have several species in common with the present painting. Half of the species in the present lot occur again in a painting of 1606 in the Cleveland Museum of Art (Inv. no. 60.108), some in the same place within that composition; for example, the rose leaves lower left and the striped columbine lower right. The composition is also very closely related to a painting of 1607 formerly with John Mitchell and Son, London (see the catalogue of the exhibition, The Mauritshuis in Bloom, The Hague, 1992, p. 62, no. 6), where the magpie moth has been painted in reverse. An identical pink rose, Siberian iris and fly may be seen in one of the most well-known flower pieces by Bosschaert, a work of 1609 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna