Carstian Luyckx

With Leonard Koetser, by 1960 (as Daniel Seghers);
With David Koetser, by 2011, from whom acquired by the present owner.

London, Leonard Koetser Gallery, Autumn exhibition of fine old master paintings of the Dutch, Flemish and other schools, 7 November – 7 December 1960, no. 19 (as Daniel Seghers).

The panel comes from one plank, which is uncradled, flat and stable. The paint surface is clean, the colours are bright and the impasto is well-preserved - the painting is in overall excellent condition. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals very minor spot retouching to the two roses and tulips, and very small spots in the whites. There is otherwise no intervention. Offered in a stained dark wood frame in excellent condition.
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One of Antwerp's most accomplished seventeenth-century still-life painters, Carstian Luyckx remains, surprisingly, relatively unknown and despite his distinctive style, his works have often passed under the names of other artists, as has previously been the case with the present painting. This is a particularly rare example within Luyckx's œuvre, which contains very few still lifes of flowers in a vase. Most comparable is the painting signed with monogram KL, sold New York, Sotheby's, 5 June 2002, lot 27, in which daffodils, identical to those depicted here, are arranged differently within a composition of tulips and roses placed on a similar stone ledge.

Trained under Philips de Marlier and Frans Francken III, Luyckx is documented in Antwerp up until 1653, having been made a master in the Guild of Saint Luke in 1645. As some of his later paintings have French inscriptions, it is presumed that after this time he may have travelled south, though as yet there is no documentary evidence to support this and with only two known dated pictures, it is difficult to establish a chronology for his work.

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer of the RKD, The Hague, for endorsing the attribution to Carstian Luyckx and for dating this painting to the first half of the 1650s, before the artist's move away from Antwerp.