Jan Jansz. den Uyl the Elder

Private collection, Dusseldorf, before 1940;
With Hans M. Cramer, The Hague, before 1969;
A.W. Lowenthal, New York;
From whom acquired by the present collector.

P. de Boer, "J.J. den Uyl", in Oud Holland, 1940, vol. LVII, p. 62, no. 'a';
L.J. Bol, Holländische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts nahe den grossen Meistern, Braunschweig 1969, p. 72-3; 
Antiek, vol. II, no. 5, 1967, p. 151;
N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message..., Schiedam 1980, vol. I, pp. 219-20, vol. II, p. 129, no. 666, reproduced.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This oak panel has a cradle from some time in the twentieth century. There are two horizontal joints, one in the upper background and another along the edge of the table. Both appear to have been reglued and to have a fairly wide band of retouching, with a rather more marked unevenness of plane to the right of the upper joint. The restoration is well integrated along the two joints, and along one or two old short retouched cracks: one coming in about two to three inches from the upper right edge with another similar length from the right nearer the base. There is no recent sign of movement in the panel at all. Other tiny cosmetic retouchings can be seen under ultra violet light in the background, and occasionally in the drapery, with two rather larger retouchings towards the middle of the left side, and a narrow scratch in the background near the jug. The overall condition is beautifully strong and unworn, with rich oily brushwork intact and thick impasted detail. There is a film of slightly older varnish wisely left on the table cloth where a fine premature craquelure can just be seen, but throughout the surface is richly preserved, and apart from the bands of retouching along the joints there is no trace of radical intervention in the past. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This is one of the fifteen works by Den Uyl identified in Pieter de Boer's groundbreaking article on the artist published in Oud Holland in 1940.¹  De Boer listed eight works that he knew first hand, five of which were signed with the artist's owl device; he then listed six further works that he knew only from old photographs, of which the present work was one.  De Boer's article began to make sense of Den Uyl's oeuvre for the first time and in it he claimed to have 'retrieved [the artist] from forgetlfulness'.²  Prior to his research, the majority of the artist's works had been previously concealed by mis-attibutions to Willem Claesz. Heda and other painters of the monochrome banketje; for example, the picture in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin (now the Bode Museum) was catalogued as by Heda in the pre-1940s catalogues of the collection and only after 1940 was it re-attributed to Den Uyl.³

Den Uyl's approach to the banketjes for which he is best known was a very individual one and it is because of this, and perhaps because he was based in Amsterdam not Haarlem, that he stands apart from his peers in this field. He was able to reproduce the scratches, dents and reflections on metallic surfaces with unrivalled skill and the silvery black tones he used to achieve this are entirely his own. The present work is a beautiful example of the intense contrast Den Uyl achieves between the dazzling white tablecloth and the rich black of the pewter jug. In terms of composition it employs the same motif that recurs again and again in his oeuvre, that of an overturned tazza sitting on a crumpled tablecloth, its base placed just in front of and overlapping the base of the jug. This motif, and indeed the very same jug, reappears in his large upright still life sold New York, Sotheby's, 14 January 1988, lot 41 (for $2,200,000) and, with the jug turned around and its lid open, in the paintings in Berlin, Groningen, Copenhagen, and that sold recently in London, Sotheby's, 5 December 2007, lot 39 (for £1,800,000).⁴

1. See under Literature.
2. De Boer, op. cit., p. 64.
3. See, for example, H. Posse (rev.), Die Gemäldegalerie des Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums, Berlin 1911, p. 289, reproduced. 
4. Berlin, Bode Museum; Groningen, Municipal Museum; Copenhagen, State Museum of Fine Arts; see Vroom, under Literature, vol. II, nos. 665, 669, and 670 respectively.