Willem Claesz. Heda Haarlem 1594 - 1680

With Leonard Koetser, 1967;
Susan Gäerde, Malmö, Sweden;
By whom sold, London, Christie's, 8 December 1972, lot 75, for 9,000 Guineas to the wife of the late owner, on behalf of her husband.

Heda's monochrome banketje still lifes from the first half of the 1630s form a remarkably cohesive group.  He drew from a strictly limited repertoire of objects, which recur in close relationship to one another in many if not most of his pictures from this period.  The relationship between them is modulated, but not substantially altered.  The roemer containing white wine and the overturned tazza, seen in the present picture, are usually shown, as here, with the roemer behind the foot of the overturned tazza, although they are shown at either side of the composition or in its centre.  This motif is found in several works from 1630, and then consistently until 1634, when Heda completely ceased to use it, except for a few substantially later works in which he seems deliberately to have revisited his early period (see N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message..., Schiedam 1980, vol. 2, pp. 66-9, nos. 328-346, many reproduced).  The staggered arrangement of partly eaten pies on pewter dishes is also found in many of his pictures from this early period, starting with the picture dated 1631 in Dresden (Vroom, op. cit, vol. 1, reproduced p. 67, fig. 82).

Although Heda was already about 35 by the time he started to paint these pictures, only a handful of earlier works are known by him, and they represent a remarkable early flowering of his talent.  They coincide with Pieter Claesz.' s experiments with monochrome still life painting, and both artists seem to have swapped motifs, such as the roemer and overturned tazza, but Heda's pictures are distinguished by the predominantly muted green tones so evident in the present work. Heda was particularly concerned with the effects of light on various surfaces, and the way that they reflect or refract it: the myriad glints of light from the polished silver tazza and the cool green tones of the wine refracting the light reflected into it by the tazza perfectly exemplify his mastery of this.