Dirck de Bray

With John Mitchell & Sons, London;
Anonymous sale ("The Property of an English Private Collector"), New York, Christie's, 31 January 1997, lot 47, where acquired by the present collector.

R. Gibson, Flower Painting, Oxford 1976, p. 9, reproduced fig. 15;
F.G. Meijer, "Joseph and Dirck de Bray, Painters of still lifes," in Painting Family: The De Brays, Masters of 17th Century Holland, exh. cat., Haarlem and London 2008, p. 31, reproduced fig. 27 (as Dirck de Bray [and Joseph de Bray?]).

The support consists of a single, stable, flat panel, bevelled on all bar the top edge. The painting has been fairly recently restored and the paint surface is secure and clean and generally in good condition under an even varnish. There is a tiny paint loss in the upper right corner along the right margin of 1.5 cm. The painting has suffered in cleaning somewhat and there is abrasion in the white marble, in the upper left quadrant of the background and in the flower at the top of the composition, all of which have received retouches. The colour of the yellow sunflower has partially degraded. The retouches are reasonably competent and in general the painting is in good condition and should be hung as is. Offered in a gilt wood and plaster frame in good condition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This beautiful signed and dated panel is the earliest known work by Dirck de Bray and one of only seven known pure flower still lifes by the artist.  Dirck de Bray came from an important Dutch family of painters headed by his father Salomon and including his brothers Jan and Joseph. What little is known about Dirck's career is closely bound to the tragic history of this family dynasty. Salomon de Bray was a popular and highly sought after artist whose primary activity was in the field of history painting.  After his marriage in 1625, he fathered several children, three of which went on to train in his workshop. As was tradition, his eldest (and most talented) son Jan followed in his footsteps to become a history painter. Salomon's second son Joseph, presumably for commercial and practical reasons, was trained as a still-life painter. His third son, Dirck, although having studied in his father's workshop and having made copies after the elder De Bray's paintings, was apprenticed in 1656 to the bookbinder and printer Passchier van Wesbusch II as a lettering and page designer. Thus, Salomon was careful to ensure that all his sons had a different artistic speciality and would not be competing against each other for commissions.  Tragedy struck in 1664 when Salomon, his wife, his daughters and Joseph all died of the plague.  However, this opened up the field for Dirck's return to his earlier métier as a painter and, as his surviving brother Jan continued to specialize in history painting, the obvious choice of genre for Dirck became still-life painting.

Thus the present painting represents a dazzling debut for the young artist, and predates the other known flower pieces by several years, which date to the 1670s and 1680s.  In fact, the early and unique dating of this particular work has led to the suggestion that in this Basket of Flowers Dirck was actually finishing off his deceased brother Joseph's work; Fred G. Meijer (see Literature) has suggested that the DBray signature may be adapted from his brother's earlier signature Josepho. The strong similarities between the present work and Joseph's still lifes make this a plausible suggestion.  The powerful chiaroscuro with the light focused on the marble ledge and handful of highlighted flowers seems to be very much derived from Joseph's work, such as the Still Life of Flowers around a Porcelain Bottle on a Marble Plinth, dated 1661 (Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels, inv. 6315).¹  

However, the temporal gap between the present panel and Dirck's next known securely dated (and certainly independent) still life of 1671 may not be as large as suggested by the extant examples of his work. In an inventory drawn up in 1668 of the Amsterdam collection of Pieter Fris, there is mentioned "Een bloemglasie van D. de Braey [a Flowers in a Vase by D. de Bray ]", thus suggesting another, still unknown still life datable to the second half of the 1660s.  Furthermore, strong stylistic similarities between the present work and Dirck's still lifes of the 1670s seem to point to the present work being entirely of Dirck's own creation. Many of Dirck's still-lifes have the same warm, almost primary palate as the present work which is dominated by tones of red, yellow and white.  In his 1671 Flower Still Life with Guelder Rose, Columbine and Peonies in a White Vase the same basic palette is used although blue is subsisted for yellow.² In both works he also deliberately uses the white of the marble and the black of the background to organise the central part of the composition and in both paintings the green leaves are of so dark a hue they seem to fade into to the background rather than add to the colour scheme. Moreover, as can be seen here and in the later works Dirck's handling of paint is more robust, like his father's, and this results in a naturalness that differs from his brothers smoother and more refined style.

The brothers De Bray -- Dirck and Joseph -- had their own individual style of painting that was different from what other still-life painters were doing in Holland in the seventeenth century. Although together they only painted 18 still lifes in a cumulative 25 years, their uniqueness and quality makes their work stand out amongst the plethora of other artists working in this genre.

1.  See Meijer, under Literature, pp. 118-9, cat. no. 44, reproduced.
3.  Idem, pp. 122-3, cat. no. 46, reproduced.