Wild strawberries in a glazed earthenware bowl with a façon de Venise of red wine, a pink rose and cherries on a partially draped wooden ledge

Along Chong and Wouter Kloek, in the catalogue of the exhibition, Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, Zwolle, 1999, p. 206, refer to Jan Jansz. van de Velde as 'one of the most unusual talents in still-life painting of the seventeenth century. He was able to effectively create a sense of atmosphere and mood despite somewhat limited technical skills. For example, van de Velde never properly mastered one of the essential element [sic.] of still life- the convincing rendering of circular forms like bowls and glasses. Correctly depicted, a plate seen in perspective becomes an oval, but van de Velde invariably paints a shape with rounded extremities joined by parallel lines.'

Very little is known about the life and career of Jan Jansz. van de Velde, except that he came from a family of painters. His father Jan van de Velde (c. 1593-1641) was a celebrated draughtsman and printmaker and his distant cousin Esaias van de Velde was the well known landscape painter. Most dated works by Jan are from 1639 to 1662 with good examples in the Mauritshuis, The Hague (Inv. no. 533) and in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (see loc. cit., p. 206, no. 45).

We are grateful to Mr. Fred Meijer of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague, for confirming the attribution on the basis of a color transparency (written communication, 30 March 2005).