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Lot Essay
Simon Luttichuys was born in London in 1610 and is recorded in documents there with the Anglicized surname 'Littlehouse' through 1639. First documented in Amsterdam in 1646, it is generally believed that he was resident there by at the latest 1644. In several instances Luttichuys' vanitas still lifes of the mid-1640s record works by Jan Lievens, with whom Luttichuys may have become acquainted when both painters were resident in London in the first half of the 1630s. By the end of the decade, Luttichuys increasingly began to specialize in sumptuous banquet pieces that were to have a strong influence on the works of Willem Kalf.
This well-preserved painting is one of a small, homogenous group of fewer than ten works that Bernd Ebert grouped together based on their upright format, intimate scale, pyramidal arrangement of objects and typical execution on a panel rather than canvas support (see B. Ebert, op. cit., pp. 159-165). Though none of these works is dated, they probably originated in the second half of the 1640s, a period of great importance to Luttichuys' development as a still life painter. In each case, a limited number of objects—typically one or more pieces of fruit and a handful of nuts arranged symmetrically before a façon de Venise glass—rests on a stone ledge before a dark background.
Luttichuys' handling of paint in these works exhibits a remarkable freedom and looseness of touch, especially evident here in the summary strokes used to define the play of light across the medlar at lower right. This 'abstracted' quality, created by both the distilled composition and fluid handling of the brush, lends the painting a visual immediacy that is more akin to the works of artists like the American still life painter John Frederick Peto (1858-1907) some two centuries later than any of Luttichuys' Dutch contemporaries (fig. 1).
This well-preserved painting is one of a small, homogenous group of fewer than ten works that Bernd Ebert grouped together based on their upright format, intimate scale, pyramidal arrangement of objects and typical execution on a panel rather than canvas support (see B. Ebert, op. cit., pp. 159-165). Though none of these works is dated, they probably originated in the second half of the 1640s, a period of great importance to Luttichuys' development as a still life painter. In each case, a limited number of objects—typically one or more pieces of fruit and a handful of nuts arranged symmetrically before a façon de Venise glass—rests on a stone ledge before a dark background.
Luttichuys' handling of paint in these works exhibits a remarkable freedom and looseness of touch, especially evident here in the summary strokes used to define the play of light across the medlar at lower right. This 'abstracted' quality, created by both the distilled composition and fluid handling of the brush, lends the painting a visual immediacy that is more akin to the works of artists like the American still life painter John Frederick Peto (1858-1907) some two centuries later than any of Luttichuys' Dutch contemporaries (fig. 1).