Object data
oil on copper
support: height 31 cm × width 22.5 cm
Ambrosius Bosschaert
Still Life with Flowers in a Wan-Li Vase
1619
Inscriptions
- signature and date, in ligated monogram, bottom left: AB.1619.
Technical notes
The work was painted on a thin copper plate. The ground layer consists of lead white paint with a slight admixture of lamp black and yellow ochre. Infrared reflectography revealed a concise underdrawing on top of this layer. A vertical line was drawn in the middle of the copper plate as a starting point for the underdrawing. There is a pentimento in the vase. Most of the flowers were reserved in the green-brown background. A smooth underpaint was applied in the reserves. The flowers were then built up with several thin glazes.
Scientific examination and reports
- infrared reflectography: M. Wolters, RKD, 2 October 1998
- paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. R 39/1-10, 15 November 1998
- technical report: M. van de Laar, RMA, 23 January 2003
Literature scientific examination and reports
Wallert et al. in Amsterdam 1999, pp. 48-51
Condition
Fair. The varnish has yellowed.
Provenance
...; donated to the museum by Dr Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), The Hague, 4 May 18901
Object number: SK-A-1522
Credit line: Gift of A. Bredius, The Hague
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Ambrosius Bosschaert (Antwerp 1573 - The Hague 1621)
Ambrosius Bosschaert was baptized in Antwerp on 18 November 1573. His family moved to Middelburg around 1587. It is not known with whom he trained. A painter named Ambrosius Bosschaert is mentioned several times as board member and dean in the Middelburg guild records between 1593 and 1613. These references, however, might be to Bosschaert’s father, who had the same first name, and who was possibly also a painter. Bosschaert was still living in Middelburg in 1611, but was subsequently recorded in Amsterdam (1614), Bergen op Zoom (1615), Utrecht (1615-19) and Breda (1619-21). He was also active as an art dealer. His oeuvre of some 50 paintings consists of flower pieces, connected in style with those of Jan Brueghel, and a small number of fruit still lifes. His dated paintings range between 1605 and 1621. Bosschaert achieved great contemporary success and was able to ask up to 240 guilders for his paintings towards the end of his life. According to the artist’s daughter, in 1621 he asked 1,000 guilders for a flower piece he had made for Prince Maurits’s bottelier. Bosschaert’s sons Johannes (c. 1607-28), Ambrosius the Younger (1609-45) and Abraham (1612/13-43) were also still life painters and presumably trained with him. Another pupil was his brother-in-law Balthasar van der Ast (c. 1593/94-1657).2
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Bredius 1913; Bol 1960, pp. 14-33; Bok in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 302-03; Meijer in Saur XIII, 1996, pp. 200-01; Van der Willigen/Meijer 2003, p. 45
Entry
In his early work Ambrosius Bosschaert depicted his bouquets against a neutral background. From 1618 onwards, when he was living in Utrecht, he placed his vases in a niche, probably under Roelant Savery’s influence.3 Around 1619, the year he moved to Breda, he began replacing the niches with windows, but he also continued depicting vases against a neutral background, as in the present painting.4 Both the composition and the shape of the bouquet are symmetrical. The flowers are portrayed in their entirety as far as possible, and the light is distributed evenly. These features are characteristic of the style of the first generation of flower painters, to which Bosschaert belonged. The blue-and-white porcelain vase is from China’s Wan-li period (1573-1619). Wan-li porcelain was brought to Europe in Portuguese ships soon after 1600, and often features in still lifes by Bosschaert and his followers.
As Bergström and Bol have pointed out, Bosschaert worked after studies, either watercolour drawings or oil sketches.5 Repetitions frequently occur in his oeuvre, and the artist did not go to great lengths to vary specific motifs. For example, the carnation on the table in the Rijksmuseum painting can be found in exactly the same place in several other paintings from around 1618-19.6 In addition to his use of studies, Bosschaert may also have copied parts of other paintings still present in the studio, as repetitions most often occur in paintings from the same period.7
Bol noted that a still life with flowers painted by Bosschaert’s pupil and brother-in-law Balthasar van der Ast is very similar to the present painting.8 This picture was probably painted around 1623, four years after Bosschaert’s Rijksmuseum painting. Both artists used a gilt-mounted Wan-li vase, and their bouquets have more or less the same shape, with a large tulip as the uppermost flower. The similarities between their work and the fact that Bosschaert’s monogram can be read as ‘AB’ as well as ‘BA’ explains why the present painting was once assigned to Van der Ast.9
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 28.
Literature
Bol 1960, p. 68, no. 47, with earlier literature; Gemar-Koeltzsch 1995, II, p. 165, no. 51/7
Collection catalogues
1891, p. 20, no. 158a; 1903, pp. 59-60, no. 590; 1934, p. 58, no. 590; 1960, p. 52, no. 590; 1976, p. 136, no. A 1522; 2007, no. 28
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Ambrosius Bosschaert, Still Life with Flowers in a Wan-Li Vase, 1619', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6190
(accessed 10 November 2024 07:55:40).