Maerten Boelema de Stomme

Private collection, Switzerland;
With Charles Roelofs, Amsterdam by 1988;
Acquired subsequently by the parents of the present owners.

Delft, Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, De Rijkdom Verbeeld,  Cambridge, Mass., the Fogg Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, A Prosperous Past, 1988 – 1989, no. 34.

S. Segal, A Prosperous Past, The Hague 1988, exhibition catalogue, pp. 139, 239, cat. no. 34, reproduced, and in colour p. 131;
A. van der Willigen & F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in OIls 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 41.

The tone of the original is a touch less red than it appears in the catalogue illustration. The flat, stable support consists of two horizontal panels joined to the reverse by three small batons. The panel is bevelled on all bar the lower edge. The paint surface is secure, clean and in good condition under an even vanish. Some tiny, unobtrusive minor retouchings are visible to the naked eye along the panel join and scattered in the sky but these have been sensitively carried out and are unobtrusive. Inspection under UV light confirms these retouchings and reveals some tiny minor scattered retouchings in the still life details. The painting requires no further attention and can hang now. Offered in a stained wood northern style frame, with ripple mouldings, in good condition.
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Marten Boelema, called de Stomme because he was a deaf-mute, was a pupil of Willem Claesz. Heda in 1642, the year this work was painted.  As Segal noted (see literature), a work by Heda in Strasbourg painted in the preceding year reveals the extent of his influence: the distinctive motif of a Nauutils shell cup with lavish mounts and base turned on its side occurs in both, for example.  One other work, in Copenhagen, is also dated 1642,and no dated work from after 1644 is known, and there is no reliable record of him after that date, so it is not surprising that all his known works are very simlar in style.