Pieter Claesz.

T.S. Lean Esq. [according to label on reverse];

D. van der Linden, Amsterdam, until 1944;

Amsterdam, Frederik Muller & Co., 2–4 May 1944, lot 5, reproduced;

Amsterdam, Frederik Muller & Co., 21–24 November 1950, lot 900, reproduced (as dated 1652);

Acquired by the parents of the present owner in Amsterdam in 1960;

Thence by inheritance.

On loan at the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, 2013–16. 

The support consists of a single plank of oak that is perfectly flat, uncradled, and without any sign of structural problems, past or present. The painting has been recently cleaned and restored and requires no further attention. There appear to be two separate restoration campaigns- the principle being in the background where there are fairly numerous small retouchings along the horizontal grain of the panel, those longer ago fluorescing less clearly than the more recent. The still life elements, where for the most part the artist applied paint more thickly, are less affected than the background.
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Elegant and economical in its design, this painting shows the artist's pared down approach to still life, in which he abandons the more luxurious displays of his early years in favour of compositions with fewer objects in simpler arrangements. Claesz.'s pictorial concision was to have a profound effect on still-life painting in The Netherlands. The conception of this modestly scaled and perfectly balanced ontbijtje (breakfast piece) is entirely typical of Claesz.'s mature period. The simplicity of the composition relies on grouping a small number of objects around the dominant motif of the silver beaker. In structure the composition of the present work is comparable to a panel once in the collection of Betty and David Koetser and now at the Kunsthaus, Zurich, Still life with large berkemeyer, silver cup lying on its side and gold watch.¹

Claesz. used some of the individual elements adopted here in other compositions. The silver beaker, for example, features in a panel dated 1644 of similar size in the Detroit Institute of Arts.² The overturned roemer first appears in a breakfast piece in 1630, a work now at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and before that in a vanitas still life of 1628, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The knife protruding over the edge of the table can be found in a number of compositions and is a motif that recurs throughout his career.

This painting is characterised by a low viewpoint and a unifying colour scheme of subtle tonal gradations. The overall tonality is enlivened by the bright yellow of the lemon peel and the warmer hues of the crusty bread, their vibrant presence enhanced against the dark green table cloth. 

The date has been read in the past as both 1632 and 1652. We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer however for pointing out that, on stylistic grounds, it is most likely to be 1642. The fact that Claesz. is not known to have used this form of the monogram prior to 1640 supports this analysis.

1. 36 x 46.5 cm.; reproduced in colour in Pieter Claesz, Master of Haarlem Still Life, exhibition catalogue, Haarlem, Zurich and Washington 2004–05, p. 65, cat. no. 26.

2. Acc. no. 40.129; 43.8 x 53.3 cm. M. Brunner-Bulst, Pieter Claesz. der Hauptmeister des Haarlemer Stillebens im 17. Jahrhundert: Kritischer Œuvrekatalog, Lingen 2004, p. 282, no. 133, reproduced.