Lot Essay
We are grateful to Mr. Fred Meijer of the RKD for confirming the attribution after inspecting the painting in the original. Still lifes by the artist are rare and he is far better known as a portraitist in the tradition of Van Mierevelt and Van Ravesteyn under whom he trained. Mr. Meijer considers the present work to be an early work by the artist, datable to the early 1640s when Nason produced a small number of still lifes close in style to Abraham van Beyeren (who was also active in The Hague at that time), including those in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, and the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. The components of the present still life also reveal a considerable debt to the Haarlem painters Pieter Claesz. and Willem Claesz. Heda, with whose work Nason must have been familiar.