Rijksmuseum

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 62 cm × width 81 cm
outer size: depth 9 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature and date, in ligated monogram, on the right, beside the table: P.C. Aº 1647

Technical notes

The support consists of three horizontally grained oak panels and is unevenly bevelled on three sides, more on the left and right than at the bottom. The ground is a thin yellowish layer that shows through the paint layers in places and along contours. The paint was applied with confident broad strokes, with a more impasted brush in the white areas. Impasto was used for the highlights.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 27 June 2005

Condition

Fair. The paint surface is abraded and there are discoloured areas of retouching. The varnish is discoloured.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1913: revarnished

Provenance

...; from the painter H. Boss (1852-1902), Groningen, fl. 200, to the museum, 1900

Object number: SK-A-1857

The artist

Pieter Claesz (Berchem 1596/97 - Haarlem 1660)

Pieter Claesz was born in 1596/97 in Berchem, near Antwerp, and not in Steinfurt as was previously thought. He may briefly have been a member of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, for one Pieter Clasen was admitted as a master in its register of 1620.

He settled in Haarlem in 1620/21, where his son Claes Pietersz Berchem (later a famous painter himself) was born in 1622, and where he lived until his death at the end of December 1660. The date of his first marriage must have been before 1622. His second marriage, to Trijntien Lourensdr, took place in August 1635. Documents relating to his life and work in Haarlem cover the period 1628-48, and also record his funeral on 1 January 1661.

Claesz’s name appears in the membership roll of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1634, and on his son’s admission to the guild in 1642 he was referred to as a ‘Banket schilder’ (painter of banquet pieces). Pieter Claesz painted still lifes exclusively, more especially breakfast and banquet pieces, and vanitas scenes. Most of his paintings bear his monogram PC and are dated between 1621 and 1660. His earliest known paintings, most of them breakfast pieces, are in the manner of early Haarlem still-life painters like Floris van Dijck. His mature period shows a grouping of fewer objects in a simpler arrangement and with a monochrome tonality. His works from this period often closely resemble those of his Haarlem colleague Willem Claesz Heda. His later works are more complex, consisting of luxurious displays in bright colours.

He was mentioned as a painter, together with Heda, in Samuel Ampzing’s Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem of 1628. Claesz’s paintings are frequently listed in 17th-century Haarlem estate inventories, but in the 18th and 19th centuries his name was almost completely forgotten. No paintings with his name feature in 18th-century Dutch sale catalogues, and it was only in 1882 that the monogram PC was identified as his.

Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007

References
Ampzing 1628, p. 372; Moes in Thieme/Becker VII, 1912, p. 28; Bergstro¨m 1957, pp. 114-23; Meijer in Saur XIX, 1992, pp. 353-54; Van der Willigen/Meijer 2003, p. 62; Brunner-Bulst 2004a, pp. 134-35; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 124-26

Entry

This broadly brushed and bravura breakfast piece is a typical example of the monochrome phase in the artist’s oeuvre. It is a fairly simple, diagonally structured composition with a large rummer of wine, and beside it on a white tablecloth pewter dishes with a fried fish and capers, a small loaf of bread, and a knife with its sheath. Standing on a nonchalantly discarded napkin is a pewter plate with a half-peeled lemon. Behind that is a pewter salt-cellar on top of which is a small dish of Chinese porcelain holding capers.¹

There is another attractive example of this type of horizontal breakfast piece by Claesz dating from 1628.² A version dated 1646 that is closely related to the present painting is in Moscow.³ In addition, there are eight variants of the type from 1646 and 1647 with a rummer in the left corner and variable combinations of objects and food-stuffs.⁴ This makes it likely that the almost illegible date on the Rijksmuseum work should be read as 1647.

Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 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. 46.

Literature

Vroom 1945, p. 47, no. 64; Vroom 1980, I, pp. 29, 31, II, p. 138 no. 52; Segal in Delft etc. 1988, pp. 125, 237, no. 28; Gemar-Koeltzsch 1995, II, pp. 242, 244, no. 76/24; Brunner-Bulst 2004a, pp. 294-96, no. 160, with earlier literature

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 72, no. 693; 1934, p. 70, no. 693; 1960, p. 70, no. 693; 1976, p. 168, no. A 1857; 2007, no. 46

Citation

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Pieter Claesz., Still Life with a Fish, 1647', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8141

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