A fruit and vegetable stall in a town market

Catalogued as by Jean Baptiste de Saive I (c. 1540-1624) at the Ghent exhibition on the basis of the signature discovered during cleaning, the present lot is now be regarded as the work of his son, Jean Baptiste de Saive II. His manner differs from that of his father, who painted depictions of three months of the year for Archduke Ernst of Austria (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum); another two from the same series were with van Haeften, London, in 1997. Those paintings display a close affinity with the work of Lucas van Valkenborch, whereas in the present picture the treatment of the still life elements is very close to that of Frans Snyders, while the composition harks back to de Beuckelaer.

Another version of the present work, of smaller dimensions and with slight changes, is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rheims. This picture is attributed by J. de Maere and M. Wabbes (Illustrated Dictionary of 17th Century Flemish Painters, Brussels, 1994, pls. L-2, p. 1033) to Jean de Saive II. Paul Verbraecken, who wrote the 1987 Ghent exhibition catalogue and whose help in cataloguing this lot is here gratefully acknowledged, believes that this Jean II, should in fact be identified as Jean Baptiste de Saive II, whose dates are given above. Like Jean de Saive I he was active in Namur.