A tulip, roses, iris and other flowers in a glass vase on a stone plinth

The Antwerp-born still life painter Nicolaes van Veerendael trained with his father, Willem van Veerendael, and became a master in the city’s Guild of Saint Luke by 1657, still in his mid-to-late teens. While several allegorical scenes with monkeys in the style of Jan Brueghel I and David Teniers II are known, van Veerendael specialized in floral still lifes. His earliest paintings are stylistically and compositionally indebted to Daniel Seghers, though employ stronger contrasts and richer detail. By the 1670s, van Veerendael’s bouquets became less formal, while his late works from 1680 on exhibit greater freedom of brushwork.

The present painting is an early work, datable to the early 1660s on account of the delicate glazes used to model the highly composed floral bouquet and glass vase in which the artist cleverly depicted himself reflected before a window. Deceptively simple and understated in appearance, the composition evidently enjoyed broad appeal, for a somewhat more static variant on copper which is signed and dated 1662, is also known (fig.1). In addition to slight differences in the floral arrangement, the bouquet in the version on copper rests on a ledge which runs the width of the composition, includes a butterfly and lacks the reflected self-portrait.

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs and proposing a date of circa 1662.