ATTRIBUTED TO D. WITTING | VANITAS STILL LIFE WITH A SKULL, BOOKS, STRING INSTRUMENT AND PEACOCK FEATHER ON A TABLE

Anonymous sale, Monaco, Sotheby's, 21 June 1986, lot 29 (as Leiden School circa 1625–30);

With Jacques Leegenhoek, Paris, 1987;

With Peter A. Lipp, Berlin, 1994;

Anonymous sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 7 October 1998, lot 98, when acquired.

Rotterdam, Kunsthal, At Home in the Golden Age, 9 February – 18 May 2008, no. 127.

The SØR Rusche Collection has been exhibited extensively over the last two decades. Please click here for further information.

H.-J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des. 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. 5, Stilleben und Tierstücke, Münster/Hamburg/London 2004, pp. 274–77, cat. no. 63, reproduced in colour;

W. Pijbes, M. Aarts, M. J. Bok et al., At Home in the Golden Age, exh. cat., Zwolle 2008, p. 120, reproduced in colour fig. 127.

The attribution of this still life to the virtually unknown D. Witting is due to Dr. Fred G Meijer, and was first given at the time of the 2008 sale in Vienna (see Provenance).

The present panel bears close comparison with another still life published by Dr. Meijer[1] that also features stringed instruments, skulls, feathered quills and books, which in turn relates to a painting of an artist's workshop showing a pupil at work on the still life in front of him.[2] 

These two paintings and the Rusche still life are, in their inclusion of the same motifs and objects, and in the artist's powerful and dramatic illumination of the overall composition and the soft treatment of the fabrics, thought by Dr. Meijer to be by the same hand as Two tric-trac players observed by a young man, that is signed D. Witting, and dated 1630 (sold London, Christie's, 20 April 2005, lot 26).[3]

Whomever D. Witting was, his works certainly bear stylistic similarities with the work of artists such as Pieter Codde, Willem Duyster and Dirk Hals, active in both Amsterdam and Haarlem. Dr. Meijer notes that D. Witting does not appear in the guild records of Haarlem, and those of Amsterdam no longer exist. Given the limited number of works that can be ascribed to him it seems reasonable to suggest that D. Witting painted the works discussed above at a young age, and died shortly thereafter.[4]

1 F.G. Meijer et al., Music and Painting in the Golden Age, exh. cat., The Hague 1994, pp. 322-325, cat. no. 46, reproduced p. 323.

2 Ibid, p. 324, reproduced fig. 1.

3 Ibid, p. 324, reproduced fig. 2.

4 Ibid, p. 325; see J. Rosen, 'The obscure D. Witting and the art of painting in Amsterdam in the 1630s', in Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies 36, 2015, no. 2, p. 71.