Balthasar van der Ast Middelberg 1593/94 - 1657 Delft

In the possession of the family of the present owner since the beginning of the last century.

Balthasar van der Ast was a prolific painter, equally comfortable with complex large scale works as well as tiny intimate panels such as this. This glass of flowers dates from his most productive period, the first half of the 1620s, and was painted in Utrecht, where he had settled in 1619. Fred G. Meijer has very kindly suggested a possible date of execution of 1622 following first hand inspection. Although still clearly indebted to the patterns of his brother-in-law and teacher Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, in this work van der Ast's softer outlines also denote the influence of the work of Roelandt Savery, who had joined the Utrecht Guild in the same year as him. Laurens J. Bol, in his early list of known works by van der Ast (The Bosschaert Dynasty, Leigh-on-Sea, 1960, p. 69 et seq.) lists only one other flower piece from 1622, namely the Carnations in a Wan-Li vase (panel, 28.5 by 20 cms.) in the P. and N. de Boer Foundation, Amsterdam now on loan to the Noordbrabants Museum in Bois-le-Duc (reproduced in F.G. Meijer, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, The  Collection of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life paintings bequeathed by Daisy Linda Ward, Zwolle 2003, p. 159, fig. 7.2). Another still life from the same year, a copper panel depicting flowers in a roemer with a shell and caterpillar (23 by 16.5 cms.), was offered London, Sotheby's, 9 December 1987, lot 67.