Pieter Claesz. (1597/8-1660)

THE PROPERTY OF A LADY

Details

Pieter Claesz. (1597/8-1660)

A Vanitas Still Life of musical Instruments and Manuscripts, an overturned gilt covered Goblet, a Jewellery Casket, a Candlestick, an Astrological Globe, a String of Pearls, Jewels, Shells, a Skull and Femur and an Hour-Glass on a draped Table

signed with monogram and dated 'PC 1653'
36 x 44½in. (91.5 x 113cm.)

Provenance

Lucius O'Callaghan (Director of the National Gallery of Ireland),
82 Waterloo Road, Dublin; (+) Christie's, 12 Oct. 1956, lot 18, as 'Claes' (220gns. to Miss Hammond)
Natalie Hays Hammond, Argaty, North Salem, New York; Christie's, New York, 31 May 1979, lot 67 ($34,000)
with S. Nystad, The Hague, 1980, as Clara Peeters

Literature

J. T. Butler, 'Argaty' and the collections of Natalie Hays Hammond, The Connoisseur, vol. 156, no. 627, May 1964, pp. 3 and 5, fig. 5
N. R. A. Vroom, A Modest Message as intimated by the painters of the 'Monochrome Banketje', 1980, I, pp. 29, 103 and 109, p. 27, fig. 24 and p. 108, fig. 141 (colour); II, p. 38, no. 161, and p. 106, no. 531

Lot Essay

Vroom includes the present picture in his lists of the work of both Pieter Claesz. and Clara Peeters, while arguing in favour of the latter's authorship on the basis of the unusually large 'P' of the monogram, suggesting that it might be the initial of the surname rather than the Christian name, and because of 'typically feminine elements ... a string of pearls with a red ribbon, all kinds of feminine frills and exquisite jewels ... '. The style is, however, close to that of several vanitas still lifes by Claesz. of the 1650s, particularly works of 1655 (Vroom, op. cit., no.163), 1658, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Die Gemäldegalerie des Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien. Verzeichnis der Gemälde, 1991, p.43 and pl.551), and 1657 (Vroom, op. cit., no.166)

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