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拍品專文
This exuberant still life of fruit and flowers is one of Jan van Huysum’s greatest creations. The German art historian Gustav Friedrich Waagen, who saw the painting in the mid-nineteenth century in the collection of Frederick Heusch in London, remarked: 'In beauty of arrangement as well as for truth and finish – especially of the grapes – this is one of the most admirable works by the master' (op. cit.). The painting’s bountiful beauty, technical brilliance and exceptional state of preservation make it among the most desirable works of its type left in private hands.
Jan van Huysum was born in Amsterdam, into a family of artists: his father, Justus (I), and his brothers, Justus (II) and Jacob, were also painters. Following the death of his father in 1716, Jan quickly established his reputation as a painter of luxuriously composed fruit and flower arrangements (fig. 1). In addition to serving the wealthy merchant classes of his native Amsterdam, Jan gained international renown and counted royalty among his patrons, including the duc d'Orléans, Prince Wilhelm von Hesse-Kassel, Frederick-Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and King Frederick William I of Prussia. Jan van Huysum’s acclaim – then and now – rests on his remarkable ability in depicting individual flowers, leaves and fruit with striking realism.
Van Huysum captivates our attention with a sumptuous display celebrating nature and abundance, its tightly-packed composition literally bursting with bounteous fruits and flowers. Plump black and white grapes spill out over the top of a wicker basket and soft peaches, juicy plums, and a split-open melon are all rendered with mouth-watering accuracy. Van Huysum has orchestrated his composition carefully, using form, colour, and light to lead the viewer around the picture. Whilst many of the still-life elements are clustered in the centre, curling stalks and blades of grass seem to possess a life of their own as they animate the fringes of the composition. Natural sweeping diagonals are created by a broken vine tendril (left of centre) which steers our attention away from the white grapes to the terracotta vase in the distance, or a leafy stem to which yellow plums are still attached (lower left) which connects the luminous heart of the composition to the dark void below.
The painting marks a significant shift in style from van Huysum’s earlier works, where he habitually set his still lifes against dark, neutral backgrounds. It was on the advice of his friend, the art critic Lambert ten Kate (1674–1731), that van Huysum’s 'backgrounds be kept light precisely in order to give the fruit and flowers in front of them a better effect’ (P. Taylor, Dutch Flower Painting, 1600-1720, New Haven, 1995, p. 191). Van Huysum would go on to favour setting his fruit and flower still lifes against stone niches or outdoors, as here. The sharp focus of the tangible objects is set against a less-defined park landscape in which trees, a terracotta urn, and stone column can be glimpsed. The spot lighting of the still life itself – at its brightest on the double white poppy fringed with pink, soft peaches, and white grapes at centre – helps enhance the three-dimensionality of the objects, and ensures tonal balance with the more vibrantly coloured elements (namely the redcurrants, raspberries, red cockscomb and red opium poppy).
In addition to being a master choreographer, van Huysum demonstrates an unmatched technical ability in rendering details and texture – from the waxy bloom of plums (that has been wiped away in places) to the translucence of redcurrants and grapes. The delicacy of the double white poppy’s petals contrasts with the twisting velvety flower of the curling red cockscomb nearby. Through the tactility of these objects van Huysum creates a multi-sensory experience with every detail described with meticulous accuracy – the luscious fruit appears edible, crystal-clear water droplets glisten on marble, ants crawl, and butterflies hover with quivering wings, inhabiting a world in which it is hard to imagine that these are not real, three-dimensional objects. Van Huysum’s visual trickery was praised in the catalogue accompanying the duchesse de Berry’s sale in 1837, where the artist is described as 'le premier peintre de son genre, il a porté l’imitation aussi loin qu’il est possible de la concevoir' ('The first painter of his kind, he took imitation as far as it is possible to conceive').
Van Huysum’s forensic attention to detail and painstaking technique, combined with his laborious application of glazes, resulted in highly finished surfaces. The artist was known for jealously guarding his methods, denying anyone entry to his studio to prevent them from learning how he prepared his pigments or discovering his painting techniques. Much of the truthfulness in van Huysum’s paintings derives from the fact that he insisted on painting fruit and blooms from life, which led to frequent delays as he waited for specimens to be in season. The fruits in this painting would have been available to van Huysum and most of them reappear, though configured differently, in other fruit pieces by the artist. Particularly notable is the differentiation between various species of plums (damsons, bullaces and yellow egg plums), something which would certainly have been appreciated by his audiences. Almost all the flowers and plant species in this still life have been identified and a large number of them are native to Holland. The insects are all indigenous.
This painting hung together with Flowers in a Terracotta Vase (lot 8) for over 150 years, first in the Rothschild and later in the Fattorini collections, although the two pictures were not conceived by van Huysum as pendants. When they were sold as two consecutive lots in 2003, it was said that they were of a broadly similar date, but that opinion has since been revised (see Segal, op. cit.). Indeed, this painting may be compared to the fruit piece of around 1721 in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, in which a profusion of fruit and flowers is arranged upon a marbled top, with a terracotta vase and greenery beyond (fig. 2). Though compact in the centre, the Louvre composition is also animated by curling tendrils and stems at its edge. An area left of centre in the foreground is illuminated by a pool of light, whilst other objects are plunged into semi-darkness in the background, giving the illusion of three-dimensional space. There are numerous similarities between the Louvre painting and the one under discussion here, such as the handling of the plums and the curling mallow leaves leaning over the plinth in the foreground. Whether the Rothschild-Fattorini fruit piece is as early as 1721 cannot be established with certainty, but it certainly seems to be of a considerably earlier moment than its long-time pendant depicting flowers.
An unsigned copy of this painting, with a few minor differences, is in a private collection, New Zealand (oil on canvas, 82.4 x 64.5 cm.).
A DISTINGUISHED PROVENANCE
Among the most illustrious provenances of any still life by Jan van Huysum, the present panel can be traced from the Bourbon court of Restoration France to the peerless Rothschild collection in England, ultimately passing through the hands of some of the twentieth century’s most discerning collectors. While Sam Segal suggested Charles-Ferdinand de Bourbon, duc de Berry (1778–1820), may have inherited van Huysum’s still life from his uncle, King Louis XVI of France, newly discovered evidence all but confirms he personally added the painting to the collection.
An inscription on the panel’s reverse, reading 'A. Delahante', points to the panel having been acquired from the Paris-based dealer Alexis Delahante (1767-1837), who supplied the duke with such masterpieces as Frans van Mieris’s Allegory of Painting (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles). Delahante’s business flourished in tandem with the Bourbon Restoration and he played a pivotal role in shaping important collections, marked by a renewed appetite for luxurious Dutch cabinet pictures as emblems of dynastic refinement. Delahante's activities extended beyond France; whilst in exile in London, he is known to have sold furniture and pictures to the Prince Regent, future King George IV, and to have advised the subsequent owner of the present work, Lionel Nathan de Rothschild, on the acquisition of several pictures, including works by Greuze and Domenichino (M. Hall, 'The English Rothschilds as Collectors', in The Rothschilds: Essays on the History of a European Family, G. Heuberger ed., exhibition catalogue, Sigmaringen and Frankfurt am Main, 1994, p. 269).
Following the duc de Berry's assassination in 1820, the painting passed by inheritance to his widow, Maria Carolina Ferdinanda Luisa, duchesse de Berry (1798–1870), one of the most influential female patrons of her era (fig. 3). Her 1837 sale in Paris attracted considerable international attention, with van Huysum’s extraordinary fruit still life commanding 7,100 francs to the London dealer C.-J. Nieuwenhuys, a result that underscores both the sustained demand for van Huysum’s work and the duchess’s reputation as a collector. Prior to the 1837 sale, the duchess sent 118 paintings to Christie’s in London to be exhibited for sale by private contract. The exhibition of this 'exquisite collection' was widely covered in the press, with The Times and London Evening Standard reporting that 'most of the pictures […] are of the first class' (The Times, 9 April 1834, p. 6). As to van Huysum’s fruit still life, the catalogue accompanying the exhibition noted that 'Nothing can exceed the truth and transparency of the colouring of this beautiful performance'.
It was at Christie’s that van Huysum’s painting was seen by the prominent art dealer John Smith (1781-1855). Although he saw the painting at first hand, Smith wrongly described it as being on canvas in his Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters, an error that was repeated by subsequent writers, including Waagen, Hofstede de Groot, and Grant (op. cit.). Smith’s exceedingly detailed description of the painting, which he remarks 'is a highly finished work of the master', leaves no doubt, however, that this is one and the same picture:
'An Assemblage of Fruit, consisting of purple and white grapes and peaches, heaped up in a basket, at the side of which lie rich clusters of muscatel grapes, magnum-bonum and other plums, greengages, raspberries, currants, a cut melon, walnuts, filberts, &c.; with these are mingled poppies, a cock'scomb, and other flowers, and the whole are tastefully grouped on a marble slab. A handsome vase, containing a broken poppy plant, and the shaft of a column, compose the background. This is a highly finished work of the master.'
By 1838, the picture had entered the collection of the wealthy London merchant Charles Heusch and passed by descent to his son, Frederick. On visiting the latter in 1854, Waagen praised it as 'one of the choicest collections of this [Dutch] school in England' (Waagen, op. cit.). A year later, Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild acquired the entire Heusch collection en bloc. The Rothschilds were unparalleled in the breadth and ambition of their collecting and assembled in London, Paris, Vienna, and Frankfurt some of the finest private holdings of old masters, decorative arts and rare books the world has ever known. For half a century, the van Huysums hung at Gunnersbury Park, Middlesex, and later at 18 Kensington Palace Gardens, London. In 1942, Edmund Leopold de Rothschild sold the two van Huysums to Tancred Borenius, from whom they were acquired by John Enrico Fattorini, the grandson of Antonio Fattorini (1787–1859), who immigrated from Bellagio on Lake Como to Yorkshire in the 1820s. The younger Fattorini founded a successful mail-order business in Bradford in 1912, an enterprise that provided the capital for him to indulge his interests and assemble one of the greatest collections of Dutch and Flemish paintings in Britain in the course of the 1930s and ’40s.
Jan van Huysum was born in Amsterdam, into a family of artists: his father, Justus (I), and his brothers, Justus (II) and Jacob, were also painters. Following the death of his father in 1716, Jan quickly established his reputation as a painter of luxuriously composed fruit and flower arrangements (fig. 1). In addition to serving the wealthy merchant classes of his native Amsterdam, Jan gained international renown and counted royalty among his patrons, including the duc d'Orléans, Prince Wilhelm von Hesse-Kassel, Frederick-Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and King Frederick William I of Prussia. Jan van Huysum’s acclaim – then and now – rests on his remarkable ability in depicting individual flowers, leaves and fruit with striking realism.
Van Huysum captivates our attention with a sumptuous display celebrating nature and abundance, its tightly-packed composition literally bursting with bounteous fruits and flowers. Plump black and white grapes spill out over the top of a wicker basket and soft peaches, juicy plums, and a split-open melon are all rendered with mouth-watering accuracy. Van Huysum has orchestrated his composition carefully, using form, colour, and light to lead the viewer around the picture. Whilst many of the still-life elements are clustered in the centre, curling stalks and blades of grass seem to possess a life of their own as they animate the fringes of the composition. Natural sweeping diagonals are created by a broken vine tendril (left of centre) which steers our attention away from the white grapes to the terracotta vase in the distance, or a leafy stem to which yellow plums are still attached (lower left) which connects the luminous heart of the composition to the dark void below.
The painting marks a significant shift in style from van Huysum’s earlier works, where he habitually set his still lifes against dark, neutral backgrounds. It was on the advice of his friend, the art critic Lambert ten Kate (1674–1731), that van Huysum’s 'backgrounds be kept light precisely in order to give the fruit and flowers in front of them a better effect’ (P. Taylor, Dutch Flower Painting, 1600-1720, New Haven, 1995, p. 191). Van Huysum would go on to favour setting his fruit and flower still lifes against stone niches or outdoors, as here. The sharp focus of the tangible objects is set against a less-defined park landscape in which trees, a terracotta urn, and stone column can be glimpsed. The spot lighting of the still life itself – at its brightest on the double white poppy fringed with pink, soft peaches, and white grapes at centre – helps enhance the three-dimensionality of the objects, and ensures tonal balance with the more vibrantly coloured elements (namely the redcurrants, raspberries, red cockscomb and red opium poppy).
In addition to being a master choreographer, van Huysum demonstrates an unmatched technical ability in rendering details and texture – from the waxy bloom of plums (that has been wiped away in places) to the translucence of redcurrants and grapes. The delicacy of the double white poppy’s petals contrasts with the twisting velvety flower of the curling red cockscomb nearby. Through the tactility of these objects van Huysum creates a multi-sensory experience with every detail described with meticulous accuracy – the luscious fruit appears edible, crystal-clear water droplets glisten on marble, ants crawl, and butterflies hover with quivering wings, inhabiting a world in which it is hard to imagine that these are not real, three-dimensional objects. Van Huysum’s visual trickery was praised in the catalogue accompanying the duchesse de Berry’s sale in 1837, where the artist is described as 'le premier peintre de son genre, il a porté l’imitation aussi loin qu’il est possible de la concevoir' ('The first painter of his kind, he took imitation as far as it is possible to conceive').
Van Huysum’s forensic attention to detail and painstaking technique, combined with his laborious application of glazes, resulted in highly finished surfaces. The artist was known for jealously guarding his methods, denying anyone entry to his studio to prevent them from learning how he prepared his pigments or discovering his painting techniques. Much of the truthfulness in van Huysum’s paintings derives from the fact that he insisted on painting fruit and blooms from life, which led to frequent delays as he waited for specimens to be in season. The fruits in this painting would have been available to van Huysum and most of them reappear, though configured differently, in other fruit pieces by the artist. Particularly notable is the differentiation between various species of plums (damsons, bullaces and yellow egg plums), something which would certainly have been appreciated by his audiences. Almost all the flowers and plant species in this still life have been identified and a large number of them are native to Holland. The insects are all indigenous.
This painting hung together with Flowers in a Terracotta Vase (lot 8) for over 150 years, first in the Rothschild and later in the Fattorini collections, although the two pictures were not conceived by van Huysum as pendants. When they were sold as two consecutive lots in 2003, it was said that they were of a broadly similar date, but that opinion has since been revised (see Segal, op. cit.). Indeed, this painting may be compared to the fruit piece of around 1721 in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, in which a profusion of fruit and flowers is arranged upon a marbled top, with a terracotta vase and greenery beyond (fig. 2). Though compact in the centre, the Louvre composition is also animated by curling tendrils and stems at its edge. An area left of centre in the foreground is illuminated by a pool of light, whilst other objects are plunged into semi-darkness in the background, giving the illusion of three-dimensional space. There are numerous similarities between the Louvre painting and the one under discussion here, such as the handling of the plums and the curling mallow leaves leaning over the plinth in the foreground. Whether the Rothschild-Fattorini fruit piece is as early as 1721 cannot be established with certainty, but it certainly seems to be of a considerably earlier moment than its long-time pendant depicting flowers.
An unsigned copy of this painting, with a few minor differences, is in a private collection, New Zealand (oil on canvas, 82.4 x 64.5 cm.).
A DISTINGUISHED PROVENANCE
Among the most illustrious provenances of any still life by Jan van Huysum, the present panel can be traced from the Bourbon court of Restoration France to the peerless Rothschild collection in England, ultimately passing through the hands of some of the twentieth century’s most discerning collectors. While Sam Segal suggested Charles-Ferdinand de Bourbon, duc de Berry (1778–1820), may have inherited van Huysum’s still life from his uncle, King Louis XVI of France, newly discovered evidence all but confirms he personally added the painting to the collection.
An inscription on the panel’s reverse, reading 'A. Delahante', points to the panel having been acquired from the Paris-based dealer Alexis Delahante (1767-1837), who supplied the duke with such masterpieces as Frans van Mieris’s Allegory of Painting (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles). Delahante’s business flourished in tandem with the Bourbon Restoration and he played a pivotal role in shaping important collections, marked by a renewed appetite for luxurious Dutch cabinet pictures as emblems of dynastic refinement. Delahante's activities extended beyond France; whilst in exile in London, he is known to have sold furniture and pictures to the Prince Regent, future King George IV, and to have advised the subsequent owner of the present work, Lionel Nathan de Rothschild, on the acquisition of several pictures, including works by Greuze and Domenichino (M. Hall, 'The English Rothschilds as Collectors', in The Rothschilds: Essays on the History of a European Family, G. Heuberger ed., exhibition catalogue, Sigmaringen and Frankfurt am Main, 1994, p. 269).
Following the duc de Berry's assassination in 1820, the painting passed by inheritance to his widow, Maria Carolina Ferdinanda Luisa, duchesse de Berry (1798–1870), one of the most influential female patrons of her era (fig. 3). Her 1837 sale in Paris attracted considerable international attention, with van Huysum’s extraordinary fruit still life commanding 7,100 francs to the London dealer C.-J. Nieuwenhuys, a result that underscores both the sustained demand for van Huysum’s work and the duchess’s reputation as a collector. Prior to the 1837 sale, the duchess sent 118 paintings to Christie’s in London to be exhibited for sale by private contract. The exhibition of this 'exquisite collection' was widely covered in the press, with The Times and London Evening Standard reporting that 'most of the pictures […] are of the first class' (The Times, 9 April 1834, p. 6). As to van Huysum’s fruit still life, the catalogue accompanying the exhibition noted that 'Nothing can exceed the truth and transparency of the colouring of this beautiful performance'.
It was at Christie’s that van Huysum’s painting was seen by the prominent art dealer John Smith (1781-1855). Although he saw the painting at first hand, Smith wrongly described it as being on canvas in his Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters, an error that was repeated by subsequent writers, including Waagen, Hofstede de Groot, and Grant (op. cit.). Smith’s exceedingly detailed description of the painting, which he remarks 'is a highly finished work of the master', leaves no doubt, however, that this is one and the same picture:
'An Assemblage of Fruit, consisting of purple and white grapes and peaches, heaped up in a basket, at the side of which lie rich clusters of muscatel grapes, magnum-bonum and other plums, greengages, raspberries, currants, a cut melon, walnuts, filberts, &c.; with these are mingled poppies, a cock'scomb, and other flowers, and the whole are tastefully grouped on a marble slab. A handsome vase, containing a broken poppy plant, and the shaft of a column, compose the background. This is a highly finished work of the master.'
By 1838, the picture had entered the collection of the wealthy London merchant Charles Heusch and passed by descent to his son, Frederick. On visiting the latter in 1854, Waagen praised it as 'one of the choicest collections of this [Dutch] school in England' (Waagen, op. cit.). A year later, Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild acquired the entire Heusch collection en bloc. The Rothschilds were unparalleled in the breadth and ambition of their collecting and assembled in London, Paris, Vienna, and Frankfurt some of the finest private holdings of old masters, decorative arts and rare books the world has ever known. For half a century, the van Huysums hung at Gunnersbury Park, Middlesex, and later at 18 Kensington Palace Gardens, London. In 1942, Edmund Leopold de Rothschild sold the two van Huysums to Tancred Borenius, from whom they were acquired by John Enrico Fattorini, the grandson of Antonio Fattorini (1787–1859), who immigrated from Bellagio on Lake Como to Yorkshire in the 1820s. The younger Fattorini founded a successful mail-order business in Bradford in 1912, an enterprise that provided the capital for him to indulge his interests and assemble one of the greatest collections of Dutch and Flemish paintings in Britain in the course of the 1930s and ’40s.