Lot Essay
This superbly restrained still life of quinces and medlars on a table ledge by Jan Jansz. van de Velde embodies everything for which this rare Haarlem still-life painter is best known. His was one of the most striking talents in still-life painting of the seventeenth-century, and his works have a simple and powerful beauty that would arguably be echoed a generation later by the Middelburg artist, Adriaen Coorte (?Middleburg ?1660-after 1707). Both artists set pared-down still lifes on ledges against a dark background, and both seem to have been influenced by Pieter Claesz (1597-1660 Haarlem) and Willem Heda (1594-1680), each developing an idiom that endowed everyday objects - such as fruit or vegetables - with a quiet sense of monumentality that remains utterly captivating to this day. Two ripened bright yellow quinces are placed on a wooden ledge with a small branch of slightly-furled leaves, while another branch of ripe medlar fruit forms a parallel line, and balances somewhat impossibly off the edge of the table, protruding into the viewer's space. By focusing on such a modest subject, the artist fully explores the contrasts of colour, texture and form in both types of fruit. White highlights accentuate the volume of each fruit and glisten against a stark background, in which the upper two-thirds of the panel is left daringly empty.
The only distraction in this perfectly distilled and timeless scene is the artist's own wonderfully calligraphic signature, which asserts, 'j v velde fecit'. Only forty or so paintings are known by the artist, and he remains a rather enigmatic figure, despite being a member of an artistic dynasty that included his father, Jan van de Velde, a celebrated draughtsman and printmaker who specialised in landscapes and town views, and his cousins Esaias and Anthony van de Velde.
The only distraction in this perfectly distilled and timeless scene is the artist's own wonderfully calligraphic signature, which asserts, 'j v velde fecit'. Only forty or so paintings are known by the artist, and he remains a rather enigmatic figure, despite being a member of an artistic dynasty that included his father, Jan van de Velde, a celebrated draughtsman and printmaker who specialised in landscapes and town views, and his cousins Esaias and Anthony van de Velde.