Attributed to Heyman Dullaert Rotterdam 1636 - 1684

H. Hijmans-van den Bergh-Aten collection, Utrecht;
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 28 November 1989, lot 172, for Dfl. 92,000;
With Charles Roelofsz. B.V., Amsterdam, 1997-8;
Private collection, Germany;
Anonymous sale ("Property from a Private Collection"), London, Sotheby's, 8 July 2004, lot 282 (as Dullaert), for £21,000.

P.C.A. van Putte, Heyman Dullaert, 1978, p. 63, no. 192 (as Dullaert);
Kunstwerk, March 1990, p. 57 (as Dullaert);
J. Stuurman-Aalbers et al., 10,000 schilderijen, tekenongen en aquarellen - A-L, The Dendrochronologue of Dr. Peter Klein (Hamburg 23 Feb. 2001), as circa 1652 (panel dated 1645), The Hague 1992, p. 219, reproduced (as Dullaert);
W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt Schüler, vol. I, Landau/Pfalz 1983, p. 654, under no. 353; and vol. VI, 1983, p. 3704, no. 2261, reproduced in colour p. 3848 (as Dullaert).

Although included in Van Putte's monograph on the artist and accepted by Sumowski (see Literature), the attribution to Dullaert has more recently been rejected by both Mr. Fred G. Meijer and Dr. Sam Segal.

Dullaert only briefly experimented with the trompe l'oeil genre and it seems very likely that he was drawn to it through the work of Samuel van Hoogstraten, whom Dullaert would almost certainly have met through his friend Frans van Hoogstraten. The present painting can be compared stylistically to a slightly larger and more cluttered work of the same subject in the Kröller Müller Museum, Otterlo.