Jan Jansz. van de Velde

Denant sale, Berlin, Lepke, 27-28 October 1903, lot 97;
Private collection, Maryland;
With Noortman/Brod, New York, before 1980;
With Noortman/Brod, London, 1982;
Acquired by the present owner in December 1984.

New York, Noortman/Brod, Inaugural Exhibition, 1981, no. 17;
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; & Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Still Lifes of the Golden Age: Northern European Paintings from the Heinz Family Collection, 14 May - 4 September 1989; & 18 October - 31 December 1989, no. 43.

N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message as Intimated by the Painters of the 'Monochrome Banketje', Schiedam 1980, reproduced vol. I, p. 228, fig. 308; vol. II, p. 131, cat. no. 676;
Tableau, September/October 1981, front cover (advertisement);
Connoisseur, March 1982, p. 132, reproduced (advertisement for Noortman and Brod);
Orbis Pictus: Natura Morta in Germania, Olanda, Fiandre XVI-XVIII secolo, exhibition catalogue, Bergamo, Galleria Lorenzelli, 1986, cat. no. 76;
I. Bergstrom and A.K. Wheelock, Jr. (ed.), Still Lifes of the Golden Age: Northern European Paintings from the Heinz Family Collection, exhibition catalogue, Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, 14 May - 4 September 1989; & Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 18 October - 31 December 1989, no. 43;
J.B. Hochstrasser, Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age, New Haven/London 2007, cat. no. 26, reproduced.

"The following condition report has been provided by Henry Gentle, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The oak panel is cradled and has a vertical restored join. The panel is in good flat condition and the paint layer is secure but slightly raised along the fine vertical wood grain. Under ultra-violet light restoration to reduce this wood grain effect can be detected. There is a small vertical hairline crack, 12cm long, from the centre top and one running up from the bottom, with discoloured restoration along it. The paint to the still life is in an almost untouched condition with the paint texture and impasto very well preserved. The removal of the varnish would improve the tonality. Offered in an ebonised frame, in good condition."
"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 exquisitely rendered still life, in which Van de Velde demonstrates more than ever his minute attention to detail, is amongst the artist's most monumental and adventurous compositions and can rank itself alongside any of the 'banketjes' of his Haarlem peers. Soon after he executed this work, however, Van de Velde discarded such grand compositions and in the later 1640s and 1650s exclusively painted the intimate still lifes for which he is best known; these small panels focus on just one or two individual objects and are quite the opposite of the opulent breakfast pieces being produced around him in Haarlem by artists such as Pieter Claesz.¹

Built along a very prominent receding diagonal, several of the objects depicted in this work are singular to Van de Velde; the stoneware jug, for example, which displays in relief the coat-of-arms of Amsterdam, recurs in several further works.² He depicts each object as if independent from those surrounding it, with a minuteness that other artists, such as Gerrit van Vucht, would imitate. The crisp execution and expertly textured surfaces of these objects imbues them with a sense of tangibility and realism yet further enhanced by Van de Velde's masterful understanding of the play of reflections and shadow cast by the falling light.

Jan's oeuvre occupies an independent position in the history of Dutch still life painting. As a person he is little documented, but in his marriage documents from April 1643, when he married Dieuwertje Willems Middeldorp in Amsterdam, he is mentioned as aged twenty-three. The following year, when he executed this painting, he was sponsor at the baptism of the son of the painter Esaias van de Velde, a distant cousin. Jan's last dated work is from 1663 and there is no record of him after that date.

1. For a good example of such a still life, see his Quinces and medlars on a table ledge that sold New York, Sotheby's, 24 January 2008, lot 56.
2. See Vroom, under Literature, vol. II, p. 134, no. 696, reproduced vol. I, p. 226, fig. 305.