Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder

Margarete Canzler-Friesdorf  (1865-1958), Düren;
Thence by descent to the present owners.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a strong copper panel, which has had a slight bend lower right corner in the past but is otherwise perfectly flat and undented. There are a few old scratches: one narrow old scratch crosses the outer upright of the surrounding arch horizontally at centre right with a dark line of old retouching along it, a quite recent more jagged scratch left two little lines of lost flakes (one about 1cm long and the other 0.5 cm) at upper right under the arch, with another similar recent scratch at lower left on the inside of the arch leaving three little flaking losses (roughly 1cm 0.5cm and 0.50). There are one or two other lost flaked such as an apparently fairly recent scrape in the upper tulip and a smaller loss near the lily of the valley. The lower right corner has also lost some paint and has old retouched scratches, and the outer edges have undoubtedly acquired old chips and scuffs in places beneath the old overpaint, with other little flakes on the base ledge. There has been some minute flaking in the past characteristic of copper, tending to be clustered in the deeper tones where the medium was thicker, for instance in the deepest copper resonate or madder, but also scattered in a few other places. Darkened old restoration can be seen covering wide areas around the edges and brushed over good original paint as well as over small, lost flakes in places. As well as these immediately recognisable patches of darkened overpaint there are other cosmetic retouchings, for instance in the sky giving it a brighter blue layer in places and adding lighter and deeper pink strokes to the tulip at upper left. There are a few little lost flakes beneath this cosmetic retouching but also much free overpainting. However beneath the messy surface accretions and dim old varnish the underlying condition is often beautiful. The foliage is finely preserved virtually throughout, with a few daubed strokes of old superficial retouching down the stalks of the flowers in the vase and on a leaf to the right. The pink rose on the right has even retained its madder glazing, which is so frequently worn. Many other flowers are also finely intact and unworn including the orange tulip at the top and the whole central cluster with the cyclamen and little pansy in the middle. The darkening of the copper resonate green has meant that two originally greener flowers overlapping the brown of the arch on the left have almost disappeared, with a little patch of retouched wear on the upper flower. The butterfly has lost much of its detail, however the centipede has retained all his legs. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

This hitherto unknown and unrecognised late work by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder is a highly significant addition to his oeuvre.

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder is considered to be the pioneer of Dutch still-life painting, and was the first painter anywhere to build a career almost entirely upon the depiction of flowers.  He was almost certainly painting pure flower still lifes before Jan Brueghel the Elder and the Antwerp still life painters, since he was admitted to the Middelburg Guild of Saint Like in 1593.  His career flourished there, where there was a strong local tradition of collecting, and where he owned property.  Nonetheless, he moved, firstly to Bergen-op-Zoom, and in 1616 to Utrecht, accompanied by his brother-in-law and principal pupil Balthasar van der Ast.  In August 1619 he moved to Breda where he settled.  He died in The Hague in 1621 while delivering a flower piece.

Towards the end of his career, and probably when he was living in Breda in circa 1619-21, Ambrosius Bosschaert painted a small number of still lifes of flowers in glass beakers with distant landscapes painted in shades of blue.  All but one depicts the blooms in an arched stone window opening.  These are widely considered to be his finest achievements in still life painting, of which he was the pioneer in the North Netherlands, and the best of them, the large panel in The Mauritshuis in The Hague, is without doubt his finest known painting.  When he wrote his monograph on The Bosschaert Dynasty in 1960, which included the first comprehensive study of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder's work, L.J. Bol knew of only five such pictures.¹  By 2002, when the Wetzlar picture was sold in these Rooms for £1.9 million, that number had only grown by one, a picture with an undelineated blue background, perhaps of sky.

The present newly discovered work thus brings the total number of such works known to just seven.

Of these, two are on panel, one of which is the Mauritshuis picture, which at 64 by 46 cm. is by far the largest work.  The remaining five are all on copper supports, and three of these, including the present work, have very similar measurements.  Most of them show the blooms arranged in a Berkemeijer glass beaker of which the lower part, is decorated with smooth tipped prunts, but of which the upper two thirds spreads outwards in a curve. In the Mauritshuis painting they are in a tall straight-sided beaker decorated with raspberry prunts and faces.  Here however we see a straight-sided but tapering glass beaker with raspberry prunts beneath an encirclement of applied crinkled glass thread.  This is reminiscent of those found in Bosschaert's work of up to a decade earlier, and may perhaps indicate that this is one of the earliest of this group of Bosschaerts, perhaps painted before he left Utrecht in 1619.  A dating to 1619 is supported by the presence of a seemingly identical glass beaker in a flower piece by Bosschaert dated that year.²

Within the group there are other further differences.  Two of them depict exclusively, or nearly so, moss-roses, while the other five, including obviously this one, display a mixture of blooms.  All but one shows the blooms within an arched stone window, whose shape is ideal for containing the natural arch formed by the flowers.  Their extremities are silhouetted against the stonework, defining their place entirely within the arch, which reinforces the impression of depth.  The density with which Bosschaert painted stalks and leaves, especially in the centre of this picture, is a distinctive characteristic which underscores his genius as a flower-painter.

Only one of the group is dated, to 1619.  The present picture is the only one of the group that appears to be unsigned.  Other unsigned works by Bosschaert are known, mostly from earlier in his career, but it is more likely that this picture was originally signed with Bosschaert's monogram of a B contained within an A, modestly derived from that of Albrecht Dürer. 

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer for confirming Bosschaert's authorship having studied the painting in the original.  

Margarete Canzler's husband Carl (see provenance) was a coppersmith, and by family tradition this picture may have been acquired because of its particularly thick copper support, either during his lifetime or after his early death in 1919.   

1.  L.J. Bol, The Bosschaert Dynasty, Leigh-on-Sea 1960, pp. 65-7, nos 37, 38, 44, 45, 46, reproduced plates 24, 25, 30, 31.
2.  Idem, pp. 66-7, no. 43, reproduced plate 29.

LOCATIONS, MEDIA AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GROUP, FOLLOWING BOL'S ORDERING

1.  Bol. No. 37. Mauritshuis, The Hague. Signed in monogram, undated, on panel, 64 by 46 cm.  Depicts mixed flowers, predominantly tulips, in a unique glass beaker, within an arched stone window, before a landscape.
2.  Bol no. 38.  Louvre, Paris.  Signed in monogram, on copper, 22 by 17.5 cm.  Depicts mixed flowers, predominantly roses in a Berkemeijer glass beaker identical with nos. 3, 4, 5 & 6, within an arched stone window, before a landscape.
3.  Bol no. 44.  Private collection (sold London, Sotheby's, 10 July 2002, lot 15, for £1.9 million).  Signed in monogram, undated, on copper, 28 by 23.5 cm.  Depicts almost entirely varieties of rose in a Berkemeijer glass beaker identical with nos. 2, 4, 5 & 6, within an arched stone window, before a landscape.
4. Bol no. 45.  Private collection, Europe.  Signed in monogram, undated, on panel, 31.4 by 22.8 cm.  Depicts varieties of rose in a Berkemeijer glass beaker identical with nos. 2, 3, 5 & 6, within an arched stone window, before a landscape.
5.  Bol no. 46.  Carter collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Signed in monogram and dated 1619, on copper, 32 by 27 cm.  Depicts mixed flowers rose in a Berkemeijer glass beaker identical with nos. 2, 3, 4 & 6, on a ledge before a landscape, but not in an arched stone window.
6. Not in Bol, discovered in 1992.  Van Otterloo collection, Naples, Florida.  Signed in monogram, undated, on copper, 28 by 23 cm.  Depicts varieties of rose, in a Berkemeijer glass beaker identical with nos. 2, 3, 4 & 5, within an arched stone window, before a neutral blue background.
7.  Not in Bol. Discovered in 2011.  The present picture.  Unsigned, undated, on copper, 29 by 23 cm.  Depicts mixed flowers in a glass beaker of straight tapering sides decorated with raspberry prunts, within an arched stone window, before a landscape.