Peaches, plums and grapes in a wicker basket, with fruit and a butterfly on a wooden table

Born in Antwerp, Jacob van Hulsdonck probably spent his youth in Middelburg, a city in the south-western Netherlands where Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder had been producing fruit and floral still lifes from the early 1590s. Hulsdonck's seemingly haphazard but highly refined arrangements of fruit placed in porcelain bowls or wicker baskets on a wooden ledge suggests his familiarity with the works of the elder, more established artist and his studio. By 1608, Hulsdonck was again residing in Antwerp, where he became a master in the city's painter's guild. Though a precise chronology of Hulsdonck's development is difficult to establish owing to the fact that only one dated painting out of approximately 100 surviving works is known, paintings such as this show striking similarities with those of his Antwerp contemporaries Osias Beert the Elder, Clara Peeters and Isaac Soreau, whose works have at times been confused with those of Hulsdonck.

Hulsdonck appears to have been less preoccupied with vanitas symbolism than many of his contemporaries. While other artists frequently depicted worm-eaten or otherwise blemished fruits as a means of conveying the passage of time, Hulsdonck tended to prefer produce picked at the peak of ripeness, evidently intending to activate the viewer's senses through offerings like the fleshy half peach prominently depicted at front center or the subtle reflection of light as it catches the meticulously rendered water droplets dotting the ledge. Only the fly and butterfly – both symbols of the transience and fragility of life – tucked discretely into the composition at lower left call any attention to these themes.