Franchoys Elaut

Waltham, Massachussetts, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, 17th Century Paintings from the Low Countries, 27 February - 27 March 1966, no. 2 (as Floris van Schooten);
New Brunswick, N.J., Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Haarlem: The Seventeenth Century, 19 February - 17 April 1983, no. 37;
Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum, The Discovery of the Everyday: Seventeenth Century Dutch Paintings from the Wolf Collection, no. 12. 

J. Briels, Peintres Flamands en Hollande au début du Siècle d'Or, Antwerp 1987, cat. no. 296, p. 230, reproduced p. 233;
E. Gemar-Koeltzsch and L. Bild-Lexikon, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, 1995, vol. 2, pp. 332, cat. no. 117/2, reproduced p. 333;
F.G. Meijer, 'Een nieuwe kijke op Franchoys Elaut (1589-1635),' in Oud Holland 109, no. 1/2, 1995, pp. 20-22, reproduced fig. 2.;
N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message, as intimated by the painters of the 'Monochrome Banketje,' vol. III, 1999, pp. 25-31, 37, 39, 49, reproduced pp. 25-27, figs. 10, 10a, 10b and 10c (erroneously identified in the text as figs. 13 and 14);
A. van der Willigen and F. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 78;
M. Brunner-Bulst, Pieter Claesz., Lingen 2004, p. 167, fig. 45.

The paint surface is in good, stable condition, though slightly dirty beneath a slightly yellowed varnish. There is some discolored varnish and minor frame abrasion to the lower left corner. The panel is flat and stable with beveling on the lower, left and right edges and is made up of two horizontal boards. Their join is faintly perceptible on the face of the painting and has been strengthened on the reverse with adhesive and hessian sack cloth. A 4x1in, triangular wooden baton has been adhered to the lower left corner on the reverse to strengthen. The milky varnish impedes clear reading under UV, however there appear to be some fine lines of strengthening to the join and to the shadows beneath the plates and minor retouching to the overturned cup at right and to the ham. Offered in a simply carved dark wood frame.
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A native of Haarlem, Franchoys Elaut was a contemporary of Pieter Claesz. and Willem Claesz. Heda, with whom his work is often confused.  Elaut specialized in monochrome still lifes, and the present painting is an excellent example of his ability to depict the texture of a range of objects (in this case, pewter, silver, glass, food, and cloth). Vroom (see Literature) considered this to be the artist's finest work and was particularly impressed with the reflections and play of light upon the pewter jug, a hallmark of his oeuvre.

Unusually, Elaut has depicted a plate of olives reflecting in the jug, rather than the lemons which sit on the table.  Presumably he had originally placed olives on the plate before changing them for lemons and chose not to alter the reflection in the jug.