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Lot Essay
This dramatically lit festoon relates closely to a work by Cornelis de Heem’s father, the esteemed still-life painter Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1660s; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. SK-A-138). In both, a heavy swag of fruit hangs from a brilliantly coloured blue ribbon. Cornelis has simplified and distilled his father’s composition, however, by reducing the number and varieties of fruit depicted, removing the butterflies and moths, and eliminating any suggestion of a stone niche.
Cornelis has delighted in reproducing - as faithfully as possible - the pale bloom on the skins of the grapes and plums, the bruising and imperfections on other soft fruits, and the torn flesh and hard stone of the central peach. He would not have painted this work from life, since each of the fruits depicted ripened at a different time of the year. Instead, Cornelis would have had to rely on individual studies he had made from life, detailed watercolours and even coloured engravings to render each element as accurately as possible. The brilliance of Cornelis’s palette is enhanced by the dark, neutral background. Cornelis returned to the depiction of abundant festoons of fruit throughout his career. A similar painting, which can be dated stylistically to around the same time as this work, is in the Bowes Museum (County Durham, Barnard Castle, inv. no. B.M.217), which again shows grapes, peaches and plums suspended from a blue ribbon, silhouetted against a dark background.
We are grateful for Dr. Fred G. Meijer for dating this work to the early 1660s on the basis of first-hand inspection.
Cornelis has delighted in reproducing - as faithfully as possible - the pale bloom on the skins of the grapes and plums, the bruising and imperfections on other soft fruits, and the torn flesh and hard stone of the central peach. He would not have painted this work from life, since each of the fruits depicted ripened at a different time of the year. Instead, Cornelis would have had to rely on individual studies he had made from life, detailed watercolours and even coloured engravings to render each element as accurately as possible. The brilliance of Cornelis’s palette is enhanced by the dark, neutral background. Cornelis returned to the depiction of abundant festoons of fruit throughout his career. A similar painting, which can be dated stylistically to around the same time as this work, is in the Bowes Museum (County Durham, Barnard Castle, inv. no. B.M.217), which again shows grapes, peaches and plums suspended from a blue ribbon, silhouetted against a dark background.
We are grateful for Dr. Fred G. Meijer for dating this work to the early 1660s on the basis of first-hand inspection.