The date on the present picture establishes it as the earliest known flower and fruit painting by the artist. He would have been only thirteen or fourteen years old when he painted it. The only earlier known work is a study in oil on prepared paper of four plums, signed and dated '. IB . 1623' in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick (S. Segal, Johannes Bosschaert, in the catalogue of the exhibition, Masters of Middelburg, Kunsthandel K. & V. Waterman, Amsterdam, March 1984, p. 63).

Born in Middelburg, Johannes was the middle son of Ambrosius Bosschaert I (1573-1621). He, like his brothers Ambrosius II (1609-1645) and Abraham (1612/13-1643), trained in his father's workshop. His style, however, also reveals strong affinities with the work of his uncle Balthasar van der Ast and the Utrecht painter Roelandt Savery. As both Laurens J. Bol (The Bosschaert Dynasty, Leigh-on-Sea, 1960, pp. 40-1) and Sam Segal (loc. cit.) have pointed out, it seems likely that after his father's sudden death in 1621 he went to Utrecht to train under his uncle and there came into contact also with the work of Savery.