Attributed to Andries Daniels

Copper plate is flat and stable. there is overall excellent retention of the paint surface with nice impasto, lovely detail and strong coloration. examination under ultraviolet reveals a small retouch at lower left corner and one at middle right edge; a few other tiny retouches in upper background. In a carved wood frame with a few minor nicks.
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Andries Daniels is first recorded in the Antwerp guild in 1599, when he is listed as a student of Pieter Brueghel the Younger.  Although he is recorded as a master in that guild in 1602, very little else is known about his biography or training.  Daniels was completely overlooked until the mid-twentieth century when a fully signed and dated floral garland appeared on the market with Julius Böhler, Munich.  Although there are still very few works that can be definitively given to Daniels, the similarities in execution and handling between this work and others given to him seem to support the attribution.  In particular, this work seems close to a more elaborate floral still life in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao (inv. no. 80/220) given to Daniels in collaboration with Frans Francken the Younger. 

The reverse of the copper bears the mark of an unidentified platemaker who used the monogram KW topped with a rosette of seven pearls and encircled by a ring of pearls.  This mark has been recorded on at least 12 plates, all painted by artists active around Antwerp between the years 1590 and 1642.  It is interesting to note that five of these were painted by Frans Francken the Younger, who it is believed, worked with Daniels on the painting in the Bilbao Museum (see M.K. Komanecky, E.P. Bowron, et. al., Copper as Canvas:  Two Centuries of Masterpiece Paintings on Copper, 1575-1775, exhibition catalogue Phoenix Art Museum et. al., Oxford 1998, pp. 103, 107-108, reproduced fig. 5.6).