- 49
Theodoor Smits Active in Antwerp 1657 - in or after 1659
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Description
- Theodoor Smits
- A toebackje still life with a pipe, two oysters, a glass of beer, tobacco, sulphur sticks and burning taper, all on a wooden ledge
- signed in monogram and dated lower left: TS (in compendium) . 1657.
- oil on panel
Provenance
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 8 May 1995, lot 112, when bought for the present collection.
Catalogue Note
The artist is also known as Dirk Sauts - Dirk being an alternative form of Theodoor or Theodorus - and works are known that are signed with monograms of TS and DS, and his surname has in the past been mis-identified as Smits. Very little is known of his life. He is thought to have been born circa 1635 and he was enrolled in the Antwerp Guild in 1658. Most of his few dated works, including this highly characteristic one, are from between 1657 and 1662. They form a highly homogeneous group - small scale still lifes of crabs, grapes, a roemer, or smoking materials as here -, arranged on a wooden ledge or table-top. They are influenced, though not closely, by Jan Davidsz. de Heem, and are not disimilar from the work of other Antwerp still life painters of the mid-17th Century.
The old canard, propogated by Thieme-Becker, Wurzbach and others, is that the painter is to be identified with the Roestraten follower called Caspar Smits (who was active in England and Ireland, and who was sarcastically known as "Magdelene Smith"). Though this is highly implausible, it refuses to go away, and has popped up in at least one recent survey of Dutch still life painting.
The old canard, propogated by Thieme-Becker, Wurzbach and others, is that the painter is to be identified with the Roestraten follower called Caspar Smits (who was active in England and Ireland, and who was sarcastically known as "Magdelene Smith"). Though this is highly implausible, it refuses to go away, and has popped up in at least one recent survey of Dutch still life painting.