An upturned roemer and Chinese bowl, a peeled lemon, bread and oysters on silver platters, all with oysters on a wooden ledge

Details

Jan Davidsz. de Heem (Utrecht 1606-1683/4 Antwerp)
An upturned roemer and Chinese bowl, a peeled lemon, bread and oysters on silver platters, all with oysters on a wooden ledge
signed and dated 'Johannes. de. heem. fecit. 1629.' (lower left)
oil on panel
37.8 x 63.4 cm.

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 1 June 1962, lot 7 (£1,500s to A. Brod, London).
with I. Bier, Haarlem, 1964.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 5 July 1991, lot 37, where bought by the present owner.

Literature

E. Greindl, Les peintres flamands de nature morte au XVIIe siècle, Sterrebeek, 1983, p. 359, no. 15 and p. 361, no. 76.
P. Lorenzelli and A. Veca, Orbis pictus - Natura morta in Germania, Fiandra XVI-XVIII secolo, exhibition catalogue Galleria Lorenzelli, Bergamo, 1986, pp. 87-8, fig. 30.
I. Bergström, 'Another look at De Heem's early Dutch Period, 1626-1635', Mercury, 1988, VII, p. 40, fig. 5 and pp. 42, 49-50, no. 16.
S. Segal, Jan Davidsz de Heem en zijn kring, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, The Hague, 1991, pp. 23-4, fig. 6, pp. 38, 52, note 30 and p. 131; and Jan Davidsz de Heem und sein Kreis, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick, 1991, pp. 21, 24, fig. 6 and pp. 35, 127.
J. Hochstrasser, Life and Still Life: A Cultural Inquiry into Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still-life Painting, (thesis 1995), Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2000, pp. 74, 157, no. 326 and pp. 211, 628, fig. 129 and p. 406, illustrated.
J. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden eeuw, Antwerp, 1997, pp. 273, 276, fig. 227.

Special notice

Christie's charge a premium to the buyer on the final bid price of each lot sold at the following rates: 23.8% of the final bid price of each lot sold up to and including €150,000 and 14.28% of any amount in excess of €150,000. Buyers' premium is calculated on the basis of each lot individually.

Lot Essay

The present composition is a fine example of De Heem's so-called monochrome banketjes which he painted while in Leiden. In all likelyhood, De Heem was influenced by the Haarlem painter Pieter Claesz. who specialised in these sober, plain and monochrome still lifes.

Sofar only two of these early monochrome banketjes by De Heem are known today; one in the Schlossmuseum, Gotha (dated 1628) and the present lot. The present composition has a vanitas motive of an upturned roemer which the Gotha picture replaces with a pocket watch. After these 'experimental' works, the artist started to develop his personal style towards his well-known, elaborate pronkstillevens.

We are grateful to Dr. Sam Segal for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.

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