Strawberries in a blue and white Chinese porcelain bowl, with peaches, plums and grapes on a pewter platter, a roemer, a silver-gilt cup and cover, pears, prawns and a knife on a partly draped stone ledge; and A lobster and a partly-peeled lemon on a pewter platter, with grapes, a melon and a façon-de-Venise wine glass on a partly draped stone ledge

Nicolaes van Gelder is first documented in his parents' will of 1639 as living in Leiden; as noted by Fred Meijer, to judge from the stylistic proximity evident between the two artists' works, he may well have studied there under Pieter de Ring (A. van der Willingen and F. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters working in Oils 1525-1725, Leiden, 2003, p. 88). In 1661 he is recorded in Sweden and in 1664 in Denmark, where he was authorized from Leiden to collect debts. The large number of works by the artist with a Danish provenance (Gammelbo, op. cit., lists nine including the present ones), strongly suggests that the majority of Van Gelder's oeuvre was painted in Denmark.

The present works are amongst the earliest known pictures by the artist to have been painted in Scandinavia, where they have remained in private hands ever since. Exceptionally, they are the artist's only known works on panel, a support he seems to have relished, achieving a precise execution of detail and sumptuous rendition of colour and texture. Van Gelder seems to have been at his best in the early- to mid-1660s as is evident not only in these pictures but also in the large pronk still life of 1664, generally regarded as his masterpiece, in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (no. 705). Only a handful of works by the artist have appeared on the market in recent times, most notably a later pair of still lifes on canvas, of 1674, from the New York Historical Society, sold, Sotheby's, New York, 12 January 1995, lot 41 ($167,500).