Sold Without Reserve | BRITISH SCHOOL, CIRCA 1700 | A STILL LIFE OF VARIOUS SCIENTIFIC OBJECTS RELATED TO THE MEASUREMENT OF TIME AND NAVIGATION

With Thomas Agnew & Sons, London (according to a label on the reverse);

With Colnaghi, London;

James Pope-Hennessy. 

The Art Collection of the First National Bank of Chicago, Chicago 1974, pp. 48-49, no. 240, reproduced (as Edwaert Colyer);

J. Kenseth, The Age of the Marvelous, exhibition catalogue, Hanover 1991, pp. 426-428, cat. no. 194, reproduced (as Edwaert Colyer). 

This intriguing still-life is loosely reminiscent of those painted towards the end of the seventeenth century by Edwaert Collier, a Dutch Golden Age artist who spent part of his late career in London. Rather than depicting a cartographer's table or a vanitas subject, this canvas instead includes a variety of scientific objects linked to the measurement of time and navigation. Appearing on the table within a darkened interior is a ruler, compass, pen an hourglass, and a book opened to a chapter on dialing, or properly and precisely measuring the time by following the course of the sun. The globe, around which wraps a ring of the months, does not record a map of the world, but likely was rather meant as a specific tool for these sciences.