Lot Essay
Remarkable for its minimalist conception, this composition of two flowers and cherries, although quite common in contemporary botanical watercolors, was highly original for a work in oil. Silhouetted against a black background dominating more than half of the composition, two carnations bloom in a delicate glass vase, almost identical to the jug depicted in Flegel’s Still life with bread and butter (Národní Muzeum, Prague). Six cherries are haphazardly strewn around a large glass kuttrolf, a flask with a neck divided into two twisting tubes. Typically produced in Germany during the later Middle Ages, these vessels were designed to slow the flow of a liquid as it was poured. On occasion, such objects appear to have been used by apothecaries to store medicines and for the distillation of tinctures. Here, however, the kuttrolf appears to contain white wine, suggested by a tinge of yellowness, reflected on the surface of the table from a source of light in the upper left. Indeed, three tiny fields of light appear in the shining skin of the cherry in the lower left corner, echoed in the glass objects above it, which reflect a window beyond the picture plane that provides the source of light for the scene.
This reduced composition and pared back palette characterize the artist’s activity in the 1630s and in 1986 was dated by Hana Seifertova to circa 1637 (op. cit.). During this period, Flegel placed greater focus on areas of vibrant red and pure white, isolated against a plain dark background, as occurs in his Smoking still life (Historiches Museum, Frankfurt-am-Main) and Still life with a roemer, pretzel and nuts (Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster).
Flegel was born in Olmütz (Olomouc), Moravia, the son of a shoemaker, and, not being a Roman Catholic, likely moved to Vienna after 1580, when the Counter-Reformation began to take effect in Olmütz. In Vienna, he became the assistant of Lucas van Valckenborch the Elder, whom he subsequently followed to Frankfurt, then an important center for art dealing and publishing. Flegel’s faithful reproduction of flowers and fruit drew eclectically upon a variety of sources: watercolors by Dürer, still life painters from the Netherlands living in Frankfurt and botanical and zoological illustrations by Joris Hoefnagel, Pieter van der Borcht IV and Carolus Clusius.