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Lot Essay
Jan Davidsz. de Heem was the leading still-life painter active in the Lowlands in the second half of the seventeenth century. The artist led a peripatetic career, exemplifying the tendency of seventeenth-century artists to move between the Northern and Southern Netherlands, even as the region splintered following the Dutch Revolt against Spain. Through his frequent relocations, de Heem gained exposure to a rich variety of different approaches to still life that informed his dazzling, innovative paintings, works that were celebrated for their dynamism and finely rendered naturalistic details.
Dated 1653, this sophisticated arrangement of food and drink spread across a partially draped table was painted roughly midway through de Heem’s first period of residence in Antwerp (1636-63), then as now a major centre of art and commerce. Dr. Fred G. Meijer has described how the artist’s paintings of the early 1650s rank ‘among the most productive and most successful in terms of quality of Jan Davidsz. de Heem’s entire career’ (op. cit., I, p. 215). A partially peeled lemon anchors the composition’s central foreground, its curling yellow rind guiding the viewer’s eye to a silver plate with sliced herring, a pair of shrimp and two onions. Behind, a fresh bread roll, glass of beer, façon de Venise glass with white wine, bunch of juicy red grapes and orange lend the painting its characteristic pyramidal composition. As if to emphasise this further, de Heem surmounted the composition with a Red Admiral butterfly that perches weightlessly atop a grape leaf.
Meijer additionally noted that the ‘eye-catching motif’ of the sliced herring in this painting is comparable in treatment to one found in a still life dated 1651 in the Liechtenstein collection (fig. 1; op. cit., I, p. 272). Much as with the Liechtenstein painting, the herring in the present example was originally seen head up, though the head was painted out at some point in the second half of the twentieth century (for its original appearance, see the black-and-white photo taken while the painting was with Duits in Meijer, op. cit., II, under no. 174). Various other details, including the branches and tendrils that create compositional depth, bread roll, pair of onions, shrimp and cherries feature in both paintings.
Dated 1653, this sophisticated arrangement of food and drink spread across a partially draped table was painted roughly midway through de Heem’s first period of residence in Antwerp (1636-63), then as now a major centre of art and commerce. Dr. Fred G. Meijer has described how the artist’s paintings of the early 1650s rank ‘among the most productive and most successful in terms of quality of Jan Davidsz. de Heem’s entire career’ (op. cit., I, p. 215). A partially peeled lemon anchors the composition’s central foreground, its curling yellow rind guiding the viewer’s eye to a silver plate with sliced herring, a pair of shrimp and two onions. Behind, a fresh bread roll, glass of beer, façon de Venise glass with white wine, bunch of juicy red grapes and orange lend the painting its characteristic pyramidal composition. As if to emphasise this further, de Heem surmounted the composition with a Red Admiral butterfly that perches weightlessly atop a grape leaf.
Meijer additionally noted that the ‘eye-catching motif’ of the sliced herring in this painting is comparable in treatment to one found in a still life dated 1651 in the Liechtenstein collection (fig. 1; op. cit., I, p. 272). Much as with the Liechtenstein painting, the herring in the present example was originally seen head up, though the head was painted out at some point in the second half of the twentieth century (for its original appearance, see the black-and-white photo taken while the painting was with Duits in Meijer, op. cit., II, under no. 174). Various other details, including the branches and tendrils that create compositional depth, bread roll, pair of onions, shrimp and cherries feature in both paintings.