Jacob van Hulsdonck

J.E.H. Ball;
By whom anonymously sold (`The Property of a Gentleman'), London, Sotheby's, 30 June 1971, lot 101, as Anthony Claesz. I, for £12,500 to Richard Green;
With J.O. Leegenhoek, Paris, 1971 (as Jan van Kessel);
Acquired by the late father of the present owner, probably from the above.

E. Greindl, Les Peintres Flamands de Nature Morte au XVIIe Siècle, Brussels 1983, pp. 42, 364, cat. no. 42, reproduced in colour plate 23;
M.-L. Hairs, The Flemish Flower Painters in the XVIIth Century, Brussels 1985, p. 482.

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 fine oak panel, which has remained almost perfectly flat. It has dark priming behind and one old crack running with a slight slant all the way up, nearer to the left edge than to the centre. This is a fine line without any retouching, except at the very base where there is a little old darkened retouching in the shadow below the ledge. A brief branching crack joins it from the left base running up just into the red carnation lying there. The crack itself appears likely to have been the result of an accident rather than from any movement of the panel, which seems always to have been perfectly stable and secure. The outer edges have various little minor old knocks including at the corners. But the painting itself appears beautifully intact and pure almost throughout. There are little old darkened retouchings mainly at the edges with a few in the background, surface touches perhaps a century old. The occasional little touches in the main painting are: above and around the dragonfly at upper right, near the stalk of the central tulip, near the bluebell at upper left and around the pink rose where there are various pentimenti. Although the old varnish has not generally been touched there is a patch of more recent retouching above and in the shadow of the red carnation lying on the ledge. The beautiful details of the carnation itself has not been touched, as with the other flowers above, their immaculate finish remains perfectly preserved, including for example the minute legs and gleaming body of the dragon fly. The painting has clearly had a peaceful background and early history, with minimal interference for a century of two. Beneath from the old varnish and scattering of little darkened past surface retouchings the fine paint surface has never been overcleaned. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Pure flower still lifes by Hulsdonck are very rare, and only a handful are signed. They are evenly divided between copper and panel supports. None of his paintings of any subject are dated, so it is difficult to suggest a chronology for his work; even panel-makers' marks are of little help in dating them since he liked to use panels prepared with gesso on the reverse, which makes the wood more stable and less susceptible to warping.

Hulsdonck seems to have spent some time early in his life in Middelburg, where he may have enountered the early work of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder. In Antwerp, where he is believed to have settled in 1608, he was inevitably influenced by Jan Brueghel the Elder, but his work has a greater formal elegance and refined simplicity than Brueghel's generally much more elaborate flower-pieces, and this may well be due to Bosschaert's formative influence. In a few cases his flower pieces consist solely of carnations, but more usually, as here, he favours a mixture of a restricted number of blooms with tulips predominating. Most of them are set against a dark background, and he favoured simple clear glass beakers with prunts in the lower register only, so that the stems of each flower can be followed through to the base.  

These characteristics can be seen in another unsigned flower piece by Hulsdonck on a copper support of similar size to the present panel in a German private collection.¹  The present picture is more sparsely composed, with a similar number of larger blooms but fewer interspersing smaller flowers, but in style and handling they are comparable.

The former false attribution to Van Kessel is understandable, since Hulsdonck's was to some extent a forerunner of Van Kessel. In his choice of fewer, larger flowers and clarity of depiction he was also in part a precursor of Daniel Seghers. Edith Greindl, writing in 1983 (see Literature) was the first to recognise Jacob van Hulsdonck as the author of the present work.

1.  Se K. Ertz, in K. Ertz & W. Seipel (ed.), Das Flämische Stilleben 1550-1680, Lingen 2002, pp. 302-03, cat. no. 103, reproduced.