Pieter Faes

This is a particularly excellent work by Pieter Faes, a Flemish still-life artist active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Signed and dated 1782, this panel is illustrative of the artist's impressively fine touch and his vibrant yet balanced palette.  It once formed part of the collection of Alice Speed Stoll, granddaughter of John Breckenridge Speed. She later bequeathed the painting to the museum named after her grandfather, the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.  

Surprisingly little is known of Faes' life. He followed in the great tradition established by Dutch still-life artists of generations prior, such as Jan van Huysum (1682-1749), to whom many of his best works, including the present, are indebted. Faes received his early training at the Academy in Antwerp, where he worked alongside Georges Frédéric Ziesel and Jan Frans Eliaerts, and he became dean of the Guild of Saint Luke in 1791. His most prominent patron was Maria Christina of Austria, the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and sister to Marie-Antoinette. Between 1782-1784, this Habsburg Archduchess commissioned a series of paintings from Faes to adorn the walls of her royal château in Laeken, just outside of Brussels, where she and her husband lived from 1781-1793 in their position as royal governors of the Austrian Netherlands. The Faes still-lifes were among the jewels of her collection, and she singled them out to return with her to Vienna in 1794, although these works have all since been dispersed.