The present painting is sold with a certificate dated 4 November 1983 from Dr. Ingvar Bergstrom as by Roelandt Savery, suggesting a date of execution of circa 1615. Dr. Joaneath Spicer also confirms the attribution to Savery and suggests a slightly later dating of 1620-2. Judging from dated works, Savery seems to have been the first painter to execute secular flower still lifes in the form of bouquets in vases; see, for example, his two paintings dated 1603 in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht, and a private collection (Müllenmeister, op. cit., nos. 269 and 270, respectively); Jacques de Gheyn dated flower still lifes the following year, and Jan Brueghel II as early as 1605. Müllenmeister (ibid., no. 273) illustrated the present painting in the state in which it appeared before cleaning in 1979 and confused it with a picture dated 1611, formerly in the collection of Mrs. E. Hamilton-Browne (ibid., no. 272, with John Mitchell & Son, London, after 1966; also exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, Flemish Art, 1954, no. 23; and Ghent, Roeland Savery 1954, no. 23).