Clara Peeters

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has been recently restored and should be hung in its current condition. The panel is not reinforced and the paint layer is stable, clean and varnished. Under ultraviolet light there are no retouches visible. This may be a product of the varnish that has been applied, yet a visual appraisal of the picture suggests that the still life itself is in beautiful condition. The vase may have been retouched slightly on the right side and there may be a couple of retouches in the background in the darker sections, perhaps in the upper left. However, this picture seems to have been conspicuously under-restored and the thinness in the background between the flowers is a welcome view of a looser and more brushy style, which is not the result of any thinning of the paint layer.
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Together with such artists as Jan Brueghel the Elder and Osias Beert, Clara Peeters was one of the most important contributors to the early development of Flemish floral still-life painting.   The majority of her still lifes are displays of victuals and objects on a table top. Occasionally, these compositions include a bouquet of flowers, but sometimes she also depicted a number of  individual bouquets in vases.  Most of the individual bouquets in vases are rather simple arrangements; the floral bouquet discussed here, despite its modest format, is certainly the most lavish still life known to date.  Clara Peeters was probably born in or near Antwerp, but no firm facts about her life are known. Her dated works range from 1607 to 1621.  After Peeters' earliest known painting of 1607, her handling became more accomplished, while the viewpoint was lowered and, generally, her compositions became more complex. Given the similarities in handling of the details in the present work with her dated bouquets from 1611 and 1612, Fred Meijer suggests that it is not likely that this still life originated very much earlier, and notes that a date of circa 1610 seems the most plausible for this painting.  By 1611, when she painted the group of four still lifes now in the Prado Museum, Madrid, she had fully matured as a painter. She had gained full mastery of textures, shapes, space and light. 

Although Clara Peeters's still lifes can be recognised immediately as belonging to the same time frame as those by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Osias Beert, they are also highly individual; she does not appear to have attempted to imitate any of her contemporaries, even though she was no doubt familiar with their works.

We are grateful to Fred Meijer of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague for confirming the attribution to Clara Peeters, based on firsthand inspection, and for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.