Lot 36
  • 36

FLORIS CLAESZ. VAN DIJCK | An uitgestald still life of grapes and cheese on pewter plates, a roemer, a wineglass, pears, olives in a porcelain bowl, a bread roll, on a table draped with a red damask cloth and white lace-trimmed

Estimate
300,000 - 500,000 GBP
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Description

  • Attributed to Floris Claesz. van Dijck
  • An uitgestald still life of grapes and cheese on pewter plates, a roemer, a wineglass, pears, olives in a porcelain bowl, a bread roll, on a table draped with a red damask cloth and white lace-trimmed
  • oil on panel
  • 43cm. by 71.5cm.; 16¾in. by 28in.

Provenance

With P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1961; Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Gentleman'), London, Sotheby's, 9 July 1998, lot 39.

Condition

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Floris Claesz.Van Dyck. Still Life with Grapes and Cheese on Pewter Plates, a Roemer, a Wine Glass, Pears and Olives in a Porcelain Bowl, and a Bread Roll on a Table Draped with Red Damask Cloth trimmed with White Lace. This painting is on a fine oak panel, which has one central joint. This joint evidently had a supporting backing plank at one time, with another supporting plank slightly lower down where there has once been a crack, slanting slightly from the right edge down and across to the lower centre of the panel. Both of these backing supports have been removed, apparently quite recently. There is faint trace of worm damage near the joint, presumably from the old supports as there is no sign of worm in the panel itself. A slight hint of a past curve in the panel would account for the old crack, however the panel now appears beautifully stable and secure throughout. The careful work on the back of the panel, removing past supports which were no longer necessary, and resecuring the central joint, has been matched by gentle conservation of the painting itself. There is fairly narrow retouching along the joint and along the crack lower down, with a certain amount of surface retouching in the dark upper background, some small retouchings in the cheese, and scattered elsewhere in the lower still life. Much fine detail remains well preserved throughout. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Catalogue Note

Floris van Dijck was one of the very earliest and most influential of the native Dutch still-life painters, and although very little is known about his life, he seems to have enjoyed considerable fame in his own lifetime. Together with his contemporary, the Fleming Nicolaes Gillis, he was the pioneer of the uitgestald (display) piece still-life, of which this is a quintessential example. Like most of Van Dijck's output this panel is undated but it was most likely painted circa 1613 around the time of the similar uitgestald in Haarlem (fig. 1). The scion of a wealthy family, Floris is recorded as a traveller in Italy in 1606 before joining the Haarlem Guild of Painters in 1610. His recognised œuvre is important and of very high quality, but it is also quite small, which suggests that either he did not necessarily need to paint for a living, or else he was a painstaking and unhurried painter. About a dozen works by his hand are known, with dates ranging from 1610 to 1628. The majority are of much the same size as the present work, around 45 by 75 cm., and all but one (the canvas from 1622) are similarly on panel. Only six other pictures are dated: two, one in a private collection and the other sold in these Rooms, 8 December 2004, lot 16, were painted in 1610, the year of his admission to the Haarlem Guild; one in 1613, now in the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; another of 1615 or 1616 formerly with Otto Naumann Ltd, New York; and the last two in 1622 and 1628, now at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and a private collection respectively. Another panel, sold in these Rooms, 14 December 2000, lot 25, is indistinctly dated 161[?5] and is included as lot... in this sale.

Because of the rarity of signed and dated works, it is not easy to date the present painting precisely within Van Dijck's œuvre. The closest parallels with the securely dated group are unquestionably to be found with the painting of 1613 in Haarlem (fig. 1)1. This incorporates many of the objects and arrangements that are to be found in the present picture, for example the two cheeses piled on a pewter dish, the grapes, bread roll, roemer, knife and walnuts, all displayed on a white damask cloth laid upon a red rug. As Fred Meijer has observed, the objects in these still lifes mix freely the expensive or exotic with the more ordinary. The Wan-li porcelain bowl, for example, no doubt brought to the Netherlands by the Dutch East India Company, and the façon de Venise wine glass with its elaborate stem made more locally in Antwerp or Liège, would have been quite valuable items, but the roemer and pewter plates were simple everyday ware. Van Dijck seems to have been careful not to repeat motifs from one picture to another, and indeed his style seems to have developed little over his career, with little variation in general composition. His later works tend to be more opened out, with sparser and freer compositions and the objects seen at a greater distance from the viewer. Thus although the present panel is less crowded than the two works of 1610, it most likely pre-dates the well-known and more expansive panel in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam from the end of the same decade.2

1 Inv. no. 79, reproduced in E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländischer Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, Lingen 1995, vol. II, p. 292, no. 98/2.

2 Inv. A4821. Exhibited Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Dawn of the Golden Age. Northern Netherlandish Art 1580–1620, 1993–94, no. 276.