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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Mr. Fred Meijer of the RKD for the attribution, given after inspection in the original.
Although very few details are known about Osias Beert's life, his importance as one of the most influential artists of the earliest generation of still-life painters in Flanders has always been readily acknowledged. He seems to have spent his whole life in Antwerp, where he became a master of the painter's Guild of Saint Luke in 1602, and where he is also recorded as being a cork merchant and a member of the Chamber of Rhetoric. It is a measure of his reputation that he had a large number of pupils, among whom counted his nephew, Frans Ykens. His work is characterised by a quasi-geometric style, packed with detail, and exuding great attention to surface detail and beautiful draughtsmanship. This flower still life - excluding the vase, which is overpainted - echoes the work of his celebrated contemporary, Ambroisius Bosschaert I, and in particular, as Fred Meijer comments, recalls the pair of Beert still lifes belonging to a private collector from North Amercia, exhibited in The Cabinet Picture: Dutch and Flemish Masters of the Seventeenth Century (catalogue by C. Wright at Richard Green, London, 1999, pp. 156-7).
As has often been commented, the years around Tulipmania saw the cost of actual flowers far exceed the cost of painted reproductions of them. Artists would make careful studies of each separate flower as it bloomed, creating a portfolio of images that could then be juxtaposed into a painted bouquet. This translated into pictures that focused on the shape and pattern of each unique flower, in a way that is quite different from the naturalism of later artists. Each flower had its place, and even the bold striated greens of cyclamen leaf falling over the edge of the vase serves cleverly to draw the eye into painting, giving the composition greater depth. For an analysis of Beert's reuse of the same flowers patterns in different compositions, see I. Bergstöm, 'Osias Beer the Elder as a Collaborator of Rubens', The Burlington Magazine, XCIX, 1957, pp. 120-4.
Although very few details are known about Osias Beert's life, his importance as one of the most influential artists of the earliest generation of still-life painters in Flanders has always been readily acknowledged. He seems to have spent his whole life in Antwerp, where he became a master of the painter's Guild of Saint Luke in 1602, and where he is also recorded as being a cork merchant and a member of the Chamber of Rhetoric. It is a measure of his reputation that he had a large number of pupils, among whom counted his nephew, Frans Ykens. His work is characterised by a quasi-geometric style, packed with detail, and exuding great attention to surface detail and beautiful draughtsmanship. This flower still life - excluding the vase, which is overpainted - echoes the work of his celebrated contemporary, Ambroisius Bosschaert I, and in particular, as Fred Meijer comments, recalls the pair of Beert still lifes belonging to a private collector from North Amercia, exhibited in The Cabinet Picture: Dutch and Flemish Masters of the Seventeenth Century (catalogue by C. Wright at Richard Green, London, 1999, pp. 156-7).
As has often been commented, the years around Tulipmania saw the cost of actual flowers far exceed the cost of painted reproductions of them. Artists would make careful studies of each separate flower as it bloomed, creating a portfolio of images that could then be juxtaposed into a painted bouquet. This translated into pictures that focused on the shape and pattern of each unique flower, in a way that is quite different from the naturalism of later artists. Each flower had its place, and even the bold striated greens of cyclamen leaf falling over the edge of the vase serves cleverly to draw the eye into painting, giving the composition greater depth. For an analysis of Beert's reuse of the same flowers patterns in different compositions, see I. Bergstöm, 'Osias Beer the Elder as a Collaborator of Rubens', The Burlington Magazine, XCIX, 1957, pp. 120-4.