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.
1704 seems to have been a relatively productive year for the artist, the present, previously unpublished picture joining eight others listed by Bol; of those, four are on canvas and four feature stawberries, one of the artist's favourite motifs. The stawberries are closely related to the wild variety fragaria vesca, a white-ish breed known as 'maadlbloeyers' that were fairly common in Zeeland. As in the picture in the Edward William Carter collection, Los Angeles, also of 1704, the strawberries are here shown with a blossoming tendril of the plant for visual effect. The same butterfly recurs in an identical position in an undated still life of strawberries, sold in these Rooms, 6 July 1990, lot 136 (£80,000).
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.
1704 seems to have been a relatively productive year for the artist, the present, previously unpublished picture joining eight others listed by Bol; of those, four are on canvas and four feature stawberries, one of the artist's favourite motifs. The stawberries are closely related to the wild variety fragaria vesca, a white-ish breed known as 'maadlbloeyers' that were fairly common in Zeeland. As in the picture in the Edward William Carter collection, Los Angeles, also of 1704, the strawberries are here shown with a blossoming tendril of the plant for visual effect. The same butterfly recurs in an identical position in an undated still life of strawberries, sold in these Rooms, 6 July 1990, lot 136 (£80,000).