.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This is a hitherto unrecognised early work by Pieter Claesz. painted in 1627. It joins a group of nine other recorded still-lifes that are dated the same year, including the large Pronk still-life with a turkey pie (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), the Still-life with books and a burning candle (The Hague, Mauritshaus) and the Still-life with smoking implements and herrings (San Diego, Timken Art Museum; see M. Brunner-Bulst, Pieter Claesz., Lingen, 2004, nos. 25-32B). The old attribution to Balthasar van der Ast, still upheld in 1960, seems inexplicable today.
Pieter Claesz was at his most innovative during the 1620s, introducing to the genre of still-life painting an unprecedented degree of naturalism and realistic observation. In this work, the various objects have been arranged to affect an overriding sense of casualness and spontaneity, as if someone has just left the table - the spectacles marking the page in one of the books, the wineglass emptied and overturned, and the nuts half-eaten, strewn over the table cloth. The way in which both the plate and the knife are balanced over the edge of the table was one of the Claesz.'s favourite technical devices used to further emphasise the sense of spatial realism. The artist's mastery of observation can be seen most notably in this example by the minute rendering of the half-filled roemer and its shadow cast over the tablecloth and the way in which the book, with the spectacles inserted, is observed through the upturned wine-glass. Claesz. often used the same objects for different compositions, so it is unsurprising to note that a number of the elements in this example recur in other still-lifes from the same period, so for instance, the same roemer, the spectacles and the books can be seen in the aforementioned work of 1627 in the Mauritshuis; the silver salt-cellar can be seen in a Breakfast piece of 1628 (private collection); and the same pearl-handled knife in a Still-life with a tazza and a sliced lemon, dated 1630, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
We are grateful to Fred Meijer of the RKD in The Hague for confirming the attribution after inspection of the original.
Pieter Claesz was at his most innovative during the 1620s, introducing to the genre of still-life painting an unprecedented degree of naturalism and realistic observation. In this work, the various objects have been arranged to affect an overriding sense of casualness and spontaneity, as if someone has just left the table - the spectacles marking the page in one of the books, the wineglass emptied and overturned, and the nuts half-eaten, strewn over the table cloth. The way in which both the plate and the knife are balanced over the edge of the table was one of the Claesz.'s favourite technical devices used to further emphasise the sense of spatial realism. The artist's mastery of observation can be seen most notably in this example by the minute rendering of the half-filled roemer and its shadow cast over the tablecloth and the way in which the book, with the spectacles inserted, is observed through the upturned wine-glass. Claesz. often used the same objects for different compositions, so it is unsurprising to note that a number of the elements in this example recur in other still-lifes from the same period, so for instance, the same roemer, the spectacles and the books can be seen in the aforementioned work of 1627 in the Mauritshuis; the silver salt-cellar can be seen in a Breakfast piece of 1628 (private collection); and the same pearl-handled knife in a Still-life with a tazza and a sliced lemon, dated 1630, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
We are grateful to Fred Meijer of the RKD in The Hague for confirming the attribution after inspection of the original.