- 44
Balthasar van der Ast
Description
- Balthasar van der Ast
- A still life of tulips, roses, irises, lily-of-the-valley, African marigolds and other flowers in a gold-mounted vase, with a lizard, a caterpillar and sea shells
Signed, lower left: .B. vander. Ast..
- oil on panel
Provenance
Brigadier Christopher Huxley, London;
Sale London, Christie's, 12 December 1947, lot 63, sold for £1,050 to Slatter;
With Eugene Slatter, London, 1948;
Collection of Dr. Hans Wetzlar, Amsterdam, by 1952;
Thence by inheritance to his daughter, Marga ten Haaf-Wetzlar;
Her sale, London, Sotheby's, 9 July 2008, lot 42.
Exhibited
London, Eugene Slatter Gallery, Dutch and Flemish Masters, 1948, cat. no. 21;
London, Royal Academy, Dutch Pictures, 1450-1750, Winter Exhibition 1952-53, cat. no. 134;
Haarlem, Teylers Museum, Bloemenwereld, 1953, cat. no. 3;
Laren, Singer Museum, Kunstschatten, 1959, cat. no. 22;
Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Bloem en tuin in de Vlaamse kunst, 1960, cat. no. 8, reproduced;
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, A world of flowers, 1963, cat. p.116, reproduced;
Singer Museum, Laren, Modernen van toen, cat. no. 6;
Amsterdam, Waterman Gallery, Masters of Middelburg, 1984, cat. no. 14, reproduced.
Literature
L.J. Bol, The Bosschaert Dynasty, Leigh-on-Sea 1960 (reprint 1980), p. 71, cat. no. 15;
S. Segal, Masters of Middelburg, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam 1985, pp.52 and 61, cat. no. 21;
M. Jager, Voorkeuren. Een particuliere collectie, Utrecht 1985, pp.8-9, reproduced.
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."
Catalogue Note
After the death of his father in 1609, Balthasar van der Ast moved to the house of his brother-in-law, Ambrosius Bosschaert, in Middelburg, where he remained as his pupil until the age of 21. Sam Segal dated this picture to the early 1630s (see exhibition catalogue under Literature), yet a dating to the late 1620s would appear more probable, shortly after the artist's removal to Utrecht when his style began to diverge from that of his former master. Though this panel retains the distinctly vertical composition of van der Ast's early still lifes, leading the configuration with a central, blue and gold iris and placing roses in the lower tier of the bouquet, we note here a progression in the depiction of two shells, a caterpillar and a lizard on the ledge, painted convincingly from life and balancing the lower half of the composition. The shells and animals are likely to have been an influence syphoned from work of Roelandt Savery who had recently returned from Prague to settle in Utrecht.