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Lot Essay
A celebrated early work of around 1623-24, this painting is a superlative demonstration of Pieter Claesz’s artistic abilities working as a young artist in Haarlem. He had only settled there a few years earlier having emigrated from his native Antwerp in around 1621. Until recently the painter has always been confused with another Pieter Claesz who hailed from Steinfurt in Westphalia and married in Haarlem in 1617. However, as Brunner-Bulst has established, Pieter Claesz died in 1639, while the Antwerp artist is recorded in several notarial deeds after that date as a painter from Berchem (‘Pieter Claessen van Berghem Schilder’).
Haarlem was a popular destination for Flemish emigrees in the early-seventeenth century. The city was enjoying a period of great prosperity and economic growth after the Twelve Years Truce of 1609-21 with a rapidly expanding mercantile class. Most of the monied merchants were of Flemish descent, forming an intellectual elite that exerted a strong influence on the city’s cultural development. As Pieter Biesboer has remarked, in Haarlem ‘a new world awaited Pieter Claesz’ (P. Biesboer, Collections of Paintings in Haarlem, 1572–1745, Los Angeles, 2001, p. 16).
Little is known about Claesz’s formative years in Antwerp, but it is widely assumed that he came into close contact with Clara Peeters and Osais Beert, given his assimilation of their styles. As Milou Goverde has stressed, writing about the present work: ‘ his [Claesz’s] choice of objects and foodstuffs as well as his palette would have been inconceivable without the example of his Antwerp predecessors’ (op. cit., p. 104). With works such as this, Claesz set about revolutionising the breakfast still life theme that already existed in Haarlem with artists like Nicolaes Gillis (1595–1632), Floris van Schooten (1585/8–1656) and Floris van Dijck (c. 1575–1651), introducing a heightened degree of naturalism.
Comparison with paintings like Floris van Dijck’s Still life with fruit, nuts and cheese of 1613 (fig. 1; Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum), illustrates the degree to which Claesz had surpassed the work of his predecessors in little over a decade. He adopts a lower, more natural viewpoint and, though many of the same motifs – fruit, nuts, an onyx-handled knife, a bread roll, pewter and porcelain dishware and the prominent half wheels of cheese – recur in both works, Claesz’s rendering is truer to life and places heightened emphasis on the tactility of the displayed objects. Claesz stimulates the senses, encouraging his viewer to savour the sweet berries, tart currants and mild cheese bountifully laid across the table. This heightened sense of immediacy is further enhanced through illusionistic devices like the pewter plate and knife case, which extend over the front edge of the table into the viewer’s space, a device Claesz integrated in similar compositions datable to this period, such as his Still life with herrings, bread, cheese and smoking utensils (fig. 2; Amsterdam, Instituut Collectie Nederland, inv. no. NK2451).
Documentary evidence indicates that Claesz’s still lifes were widely admired by his contemporaries early on. As early as 1628, the Haarlem chronicler Samuel Ampzing (1590–1632) must have had works like the present painting in mind when he praised Claesz alongside the likes of Frans Hals and Salomon van Ruysdael (see S. Ampzing, Beschrijvinge ende Lof der Stad Haerlem, Haarlem, 1628, p. 372). Moreover, a recent survey of seventeenth-century Haarlem inventories indicates that paintings by Claesz outnumbered those of all other Haarlem artists, a fact that speaks both to his prolific output and the spectacular popularity of his works (see P. Biesboer, op. cit., p. 33).
The widespread appeal of Claesz’s works suggests not only their desirability on compositional and technical grounds but the myriad ways a viewer might interpret them in light of his or her own sensibilities and place in society. The prominent inclusion of bread and wine at upper left in this painting may well have resonated with Haarlem’s many affluent Catholics, who likely would have associated these elements with the Eucharist. Other collectors may have delighted in the vanitas allusions of the broken nutshells and un-ripened berries and currants, whose tartness, much like lemons, called to mind the deceptive allure of transient earthly goods. Yet others may have eschewed symbolic interpretations altogether in favour of associating these painted luxury items, including kraak porcelain, with the types of goods that were then entering the Republic’s ports and fuelling its dynamic economy.
Haarlem was a popular destination for Flemish emigrees in the early-seventeenth century. The city was enjoying a period of great prosperity and economic growth after the Twelve Years Truce of 1609-21 with a rapidly expanding mercantile class. Most of the monied merchants were of Flemish descent, forming an intellectual elite that exerted a strong influence on the city’s cultural development. As Pieter Biesboer has remarked, in Haarlem ‘a new world awaited Pieter Claesz’ (P. Biesboer, Collections of Paintings in Haarlem, 1572–1745, Los Angeles, 2001, p. 16).
Little is known about Claesz’s formative years in Antwerp, but it is widely assumed that he came into close contact with Clara Peeters and Osais Beert, given his assimilation of their styles. As Milou Goverde has stressed, writing about the present work: ‘ his [Claesz’s] choice of objects and foodstuffs as well as his palette would have been inconceivable without the example of his Antwerp predecessors’ (op. cit., p. 104). With works such as this, Claesz set about revolutionising the breakfast still life theme that already existed in Haarlem with artists like Nicolaes Gillis (1595–1632), Floris van Schooten (1585/8–1656) and Floris van Dijck (c. 1575–1651), introducing a heightened degree of naturalism.
Comparison with paintings like Floris van Dijck’s Still life with fruit, nuts and cheese of 1613 (fig. 1; Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum), illustrates the degree to which Claesz had surpassed the work of his predecessors in little over a decade. He adopts a lower, more natural viewpoint and, though many of the same motifs – fruit, nuts, an onyx-handled knife, a bread roll, pewter and porcelain dishware and the prominent half wheels of cheese – recur in both works, Claesz’s rendering is truer to life and places heightened emphasis on the tactility of the displayed objects. Claesz stimulates the senses, encouraging his viewer to savour the sweet berries, tart currants and mild cheese bountifully laid across the table. This heightened sense of immediacy is further enhanced through illusionistic devices like the pewter plate and knife case, which extend over the front edge of the table into the viewer’s space, a device Claesz integrated in similar compositions datable to this period, such as his Still life with herrings, bread, cheese and smoking utensils (fig. 2; Amsterdam, Instituut Collectie Nederland, inv. no. NK2451).
Documentary evidence indicates that Claesz’s still lifes were widely admired by his contemporaries early on. As early as 1628, the Haarlem chronicler Samuel Ampzing (1590–1632) must have had works like the present painting in mind when he praised Claesz alongside the likes of Frans Hals and Salomon van Ruysdael (see S. Ampzing, Beschrijvinge ende Lof der Stad Haerlem, Haarlem, 1628, p. 372). Moreover, a recent survey of seventeenth-century Haarlem inventories indicates that paintings by Claesz outnumbered those of all other Haarlem artists, a fact that speaks both to his prolific output and the spectacular popularity of his works (see P. Biesboer, op. cit., p. 33).
The widespread appeal of Claesz’s works suggests not only their desirability on compositional and technical grounds but the myriad ways a viewer might interpret them in light of his or her own sensibilities and place in society. The prominent inclusion of bread and wine at upper left in this painting may well have resonated with Haarlem’s many affluent Catholics, who likely would have associated these elements with the Eucharist. Other collectors may have delighted in the vanitas allusions of the broken nutshells and un-ripened berries and currants, whose tartness, much like lemons, called to mind the deceptive allure of transient earthly goods. Yet others may have eschewed symbolic interpretations altogether in favour of associating these painted luxury items, including kraak porcelain, with the types of goods that were then entering the Republic’s ports and fuelling its dynamic economy.