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Lot Essay
Although not unknown before Laurens Bol's groundbreaking 1977 monograph, Coorte's oeuvre had been largely overlooked in the canon of Dutch still life painting. Bol re-established him as one of the outstanding still life painters of the seventeenth century, a master whose characteristic works are immediately recognisable for their quiet simplicity, a quality that had, as Bol remarked: 'very little intrinsic connection with the work of preceding artists and was not continued or emulated by succeeding generation' (op. cit., p. 22).
Coorte's earliest known works are larger-scale paintings of birds in the style of Melchior de Hondecoeter (for example the Exotic Birds of 1683 in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). His first still lifes are similarly on a larger scale, composed of elements of which many would recur in subsequent works (such as the Strawberries, gooseberries and asparagus of 1685, measuring 93 x 95 cm., sold in these Rooms, 10 April 1970, lot 67). Gradually, however, he pared down both scale and subject matter, until by the mid-1690s he had established the format for which he is renowned, and of which the present work is a characteristic example.
Coorte concentrated on the subtleties of texture and form, rendered here through the slight contrasts between rough and smooth, polished and dull, conical and round. These shapes are lit by a soft, ghostly light that catches the front of the stone slab, cut with an oblique line that is an idiosyncracy of Coorte's work; front and background are connected by gradual changes in tone to created a unified whole. The majority of his paintings, particularly from 1696, are, like the present picture, painted on paper laid down on panel.
At least seven dated still lifes of shells are known, all painted between 1696 and 1698. The West Indian Top shell in the rear centre recurs in another work of 1698 (Boston, private collection; exhibited Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, and Cleveland, Museum of Art, Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, 1999, no. 74). The larger shells depicted are, from left to right: an African Murex (hexaplex duplex; Roding, 1798) from West Africa, a West Indian Top (Cittarium pica; Linnaeus, 1758) from the Caribbean, a Marble Cone (conus marmoreus; Linnaeus, 1758) from S.E. Africa (also found in Polynesia and Hawaii) and a Tapestry Turban (turbo petholatus; Linnaeus, 1758) from the Indian and the Central- and West-Pacific Oceans.
Coorte's earliest known works are larger-scale paintings of birds in the style of Melchior de Hondecoeter (for example the Exotic Birds of 1683 in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). His first still lifes are similarly on a larger scale, composed of elements of which many would recur in subsequent works (such as the Strawberries, gooseberries and asparagus of 1685, measuring 93 x 95 cm., sold in these Rooms, 10 April 1970, lot 67). Gradually, however, he pared down both scale and subject matter, until by the mid-1690s he had established the format for which he is renowned, and of which the present work is a characteristic example.
Coorte concentrated on the subtleties of texture and form, rendered here through the slight contrasts between rough and smooth, polished and dull, conical and round. These shapes are lit by a soft, ghostly light that catches the front of the stone slab, cut with an oblique line that is an idiosyncracy of Coorte's work; front and background are connected by gradual changes in tone to created a unified whole. The majority of his paintings, particularly from 1696, are, like the present picture, painted on paper laid down on panel.
At least seven dated still lifes of shells are known, all painted between 1696 and 1698. The West Indian Top shell in the rear centre recurs in another work of 1698 (Boston, private collection; exhibited Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, and Cleveland, Museum of Art, Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, 1999, no. 74). The larger shells depicted are, from left to right: an African Murex (hexaplex duplex; Roding, 1798) from West Africa, a West Indian Top (Cittarium pica; Linnaeus, 1758) from the Caribbean, a Marble Cone (conus marmoreus; Linnaeus, 1758) from S.E. Africa (also found in Polynesia and Hawaii) and a Tapestry Turban (turbo petholatus; Linnaeus, 1758) from the Indian and the Central- and West-Pacific Oceans.