A rare documentary stipple-engraved goblet

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FRANS GREENWOOD (Rotterdam 1680-1763 Dordrecht) Frans Greenwood was the son of Francis Greenwood, merchant and Anna Glover, both of Yorkshire extraction. Greenwood was trained in Rotterdam to be a merchant and worked as such for some time. In 1720 he became a Customs and Excise Officer moving from Rotterdam to Dordrecht in 1726. He received revenue from a plantation in Surinam, of which he was part-owner. Greenwood took an active interest in literature and was a well-known poet in his day. He was the first to stipple a whole picture on glass. Greenwood's stippling technique greatly influenced other engravers in Dordrecht. His most important follower was Aert Schouman. Forty-three glasses signed by Greenwood are known, three of which are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (see P.C. Ritsema van Eck, Glass in the Rijksmuseum, vol. II, Zwolle, 1995, p.469 for a more extensive biography of Frans Greenwood).

A rare documentary stipple-engraved goblet

ENGRAVED BY FRANS GREENWOOD, SIGNED AND DATED, 1742

Details

A rare documentary stipple-engraved goblet
Engraved by Frans Greenwood, signed and dated, 1742
The round funnel bowl stipple-engraved with a half-length portrait of a female herring saleswoman holding up in her left hand a half-full roemer and with her right hand a herring by its tail, in an arched window frame with fruiting vines flanking the sides, drapery in the background to the right and a table-cover draped over the sill, the reverse signed and dated in diamond-point F. Greenwood fecit 1742, the stem with an inverted baluster section above a knop, above a replacement lower section and foot, two scratches over the frame to the right of the roemer
20.5 cm. (9¼ in.) high

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 3 June 1974, lot 115 (to Dreesmann).
Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann (inventory no. H-6).

Literature

F.G.A.M. Smit, Frans Greenwood (1680-1763), Dutch poet & glass engraver, Peterborough, 1988, p. 146.
A. Edelstein, Art at Auction, the year at Sotheby Parke Bernet 1973-1974, London, 1974, p. 439.
F. Greenwood, vervolg van F. Greenwood gedichten, Dordrecht 1760 for the poem on the missing foot.

Special notice

Christie's charges a Buyer's premium calculated at 20.825% of the hammer price for each lot with a value up to €90,000. If the hammer price of a lot exceeds €90,000 then the premium for the lot is calculated at 20.825% of the first €90,000 plus 11.9% of any amount in excess of €90,000. Buyer's Premium is calculated on this basis for each lot individually.

Lot Essay

The subject is reminiscent of a fish-seller painted by Gerard Dou (1613-1675) (see W. Martin, 1902, Gerard Dou, No. 41).
Greenwood referred to a goblet which he had engraved with een haringverkoopster (a herring saleswoman) with a poem inscription which perhaps was engraved on the foot, now lost;

Een haring verkoopster
Ô Zegenrijke visscherij
Wat schaft ge ons jaarlijks lekkernij!
Uw' haring, die geliefde visch
Wekt eet en drinklust aan den dish
(Oh, greatly blessed fishery what delicacies you provide each year! Your herring that beloved fish, whet's one's appetite for food and drink)

This goblet may be the haringwijfje (herring wife) owned in the middle of the 18th century by bachelor Paul Schepers (one of the directors of the Dutch East India Company), Rotterdam, who bequeathed it in his testaments to his second cousin together with two other Greenwood glasses.

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