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Lot Essay
This exemplary still life by Balthasar van der Ast is signed and dated 1625, when the artist was working in Utrecht, having relocated there from Bergen-op-Zoom at some point between 1616 and 1619. He was entered as a master in Utrecht’s Guild of St Luke in 1619 and remained in the city until 1632, when he moved to Delft for the remainder of his career.
A pupil and brother-in-law of Ambrosius Bosschaert I (1573-1621), van der Ast entered his teacher’s household in 1609 following his own father’s death. Like Bosschaert, he painted predominantly flower and fruit still lifes, but also absorbed elements from other still life painters including Roelandt Savery, further expanding his pictorial repertoire to include a wider variety of fruits, minutely observed insects and beautifully rendered seashells. Like tulips, exotic seashells were highly desirable items in seventeenth-century Holland and vast prices were paid by collectors for the best and rarest examples.
The present work follows the format of van der Ast’s most successful horizontal compositions. Grapes, peaches, apples and plums are piled high onto a wan-li dish at centre, with a multitude of other fruits, foliage, insects and shells surrounding it. Very little of the stone ledge and background are left bare; the contents of the ledge are carefully and deliberately arranged around the bowl, some extending over the edge of the stone, and tendrils of foliage reaching right up into the upper right corner of the composition, each element carefully placed to complement the overall composition.
A note on provenance
The painting descended for over 150 years in the Beauchamp-Proctor Baronetcy (later Proctor-Beauchamp), of Langley Park in Norfolk. It is first recorded in the collection of Sir Thomas Beauchamp-Proctor, 2nd Bt. (1756-1827) and is included in the 1815 inventory of paintings at Langley Park, passing through the hands of seven further baronets before entering the extensive art collections of the British Rail Pension Fund in 1975.
A pupil and brother-in-law of Ambrosius Bosschaert I (1573-1621), van der Ast entered his teacher’s household in 1609 following his own father’s death. Like Bosschaert, he painted predominantly flower and fruit still lifes, but also absorbed elements from other still life painters including Roelandt Savery, further expanding his pictorial repertoire to include a wider variety of fruits, minutely observed insects and beautifully rendered seashells. Like tulips, exotic seashells were highly desirable items in seventeenth-century Holland and vast prices were paid by collectors for the best and rarest examples.
The present work follows the format of van der Ast’s most successful horizontal compositions. Grapes, peaches, apples and plums are piled high onto a wan-li dish at centre, with a multitude of other fruits, foliage, insects and shells surrounding it. Very little of the stone ledge and background are left bare; the contents of the ledge are carefully and deliberately arranged around the bowl, some extending over the edge of the stone, and tendrils of foliage reaching right up into the upper right corner of the composition, each element carefully placed to complement the overall composition.
A note on provenance
The painting descended for over 150 years in the Beauchamp-Proctor Baronetcy (later Proctor-Beauchamp), of Langley Park in Norfolk. It is first recorded in the collection of Sir Thomas Beauchamp-Proctor, 2nd Bt. (1756-1827) and is included in the 1815 inventory of paintings at Langley Park, passing through the hands of seven further baronets before entering the extensive art collections of the British Rail Pension Fund in 1975.