Object data
oil on panel
support: height 39.2 cm × width 69.8 cm
Balthasar van der Ast
Still Life with Fruits and Flowers
1621
Inscriptions
- signature and date, lower left: .B. vander. Ast. / 1620
- signature and date, lower right: B. vander.Ast. fe. / 1621
Technical notes
The support is a single oak panel with a horizontal grain. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1583. The panel could have been ready for use by 1592, but a date in or after 1602 is more likely. The panel may once have been larger, as only the left side is bevelled. A layer consisting of lead white, ochre and bone black was applied on top of the chalk and glue ground. The support was then covered with a light grey imprimatura of lead white and lamp black. An underdrawing was not detected with infrared reflectography, probably because of the large amounts of carbon black in the imprimatura. The paint was applied in thin layers.
Scientific examination and reports
- paint samples: A. Wallert, RMA, nos. R 43/1-14, 12 April 1998
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 7 October 1998
- technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 27 January 2003
Literature scientific examination and reports
Wallert et al. in Amsterdam 1999, pp. 52-55
Condition
Fair. The tablecloth was once purplish-red, but is now almost entirely grey, due to the fading of the thin, transparent glaze of red lake that originally covered the cloth. The original purplish-red is still visible at the edges of the panel where the paint was protected by the frame. The appearance of the porcelain vase and fruit dish is somewhat distorted due to the disappearance of the thin, blackish layer that originally covered the shaded areas.
Conservation
- conservator unknown, 1904: restored
- conservator unknown, 1974: loose paint consolidated
- W. de Ridder, 1999: complete restoration
Provenance
...; sale, A.H.H. van der Burgh (The Hague), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 21 September 1904, no. 51, fl. 1,046, to the museum, through the mediation of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Object number: SK-A-2152
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Balthasar van der Ast (Middelburg c. 1593/94 - Delft 1657)
From documents that show he was under the guardianship of his brother until 1617/18, it has been deduced that Balthasar van der Ast was born around 1593/94, probably in Middelburg. After his father’s death in 1609 he went to live with his sister Maria, who had married the flower painter Ambrosius Bosschaert in 1604. Bosschaert was Van der Ast’s teacher. It is assumed that Van der Ast left Middelburg together with him, since both men are recorded as living in Bergen op Zoom in 1615, and subsequently moved to Utrecht. In 1619, Van der Ast entered the Utrecht guild as a masterpainter. He painted still lifes of flowers, fruit and shells, of which some 200 are known. His earliest dated paintings are from 1617; only a few are dated after 1625. In 1632, Van der Ast settled in Delft, where he married and spent the rest of his life. In his famous list of painters compiled between 1669 and 1678, the Amsterdam doctor Jan Sysmus described Van der Ast as a painter of flowers, shells and lizards, and placed the word ‘moy’ (beautiful) beside his name.
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
References
Bol 1960, pp. 36-40; Segal in Amsterdam 1984a, pp. 45-62; Staps in Saur V, 1992, pp. 478-79
Entry
The Rijksmuseum painting is the earliest known dated still life in which Van der Ast combined a bowl of fruit and a bouquet of flowers in a vase.1 In his early work from around 1617-20, such as Still Life of Fruit on a Kraak Porcelain Dish dated 1617, the composition is always dominated by a single centrepiece, either a basket or a dish with flowers or fruit.2 The present painting has much in common with Fruit Still Life with Quinces of 1620 in The Hague, although the latter displays one prominent object only.3 In both works the table is covered by a cloth, whereas in other still lifes the artist depicted his fruit and flowers on a bare wooden table or a stone surface. Several details are found in both still lifes, such as the butterfly, a Painted Lady, perched on the stalk of a tulip lying on the table, a motif Van der Ast borrowed from his teacher Ambrosius Bosschaert.4
A typical feature of Van der Ast’s work is the variety of fruit, flowers, shells and insects on the table, rendered in meticulous detail and arranged around the dish and the vase, especially in the foreground near the edge of the table. As Bol argued, the artist was probably influenced in this by Roelant Savery, who similarly enlivened his flower still lifes with small objects and animals along the bottom border, and who joined the Utrecht guild the same year Van der Ast did.5
The painting is signed twice and dated both ‘1620’ and ‘1621’. Examination of the paint layers shows that most of the objects on the table, such as the fruit dish, the vase with flowers, the tulip, the carnation and two of the shells, were reserved in the cloth, whereas the citrus fruit on the left, the hermit-crab in its shell and the insects were painted over the cloth. It is possible that, after completing his still life, Van der Ast decided to add a number of objects and animals to make the composition more attractive.6 If these additions were made a year later, this might explain why the painting was signed and dated twice. But it is more likely that Van der Ast wanted to stress the time and labour he had invested in this elaborate painting in which two subjects are combined.
There has been some speculation about the possible symbolism of the flowers, fruit, shells and animals in Van der Ast’s still lifes.7 Common interpretations are that the expensive and rare objects and the perishable fruit and flowers were viewed as an allusion to the transience of earthly things, or as an hymn of praise to the variety of God’s creation. Less plausible is the suggestion that a 17th-century viewer might have discerned the four elements in such still lifes as the Rijksmuseum painting.8
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. 8.
Literature
Bol 1960, p. 82, no. 96, with earlier literature; Gemar-Koeltzsch 1994, II, p. 47, no. 8/1, with earlier literature
Collection catalogues
904, pp. 421-22, no. 387a; 1934, p. 32, no. 387a; 1960, p. 23, no. 387 A 1; 1976, p. 90, no. A 2152; 2007, no. 8
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Balthasar van der Ast, Still Life with Fruits and Flowers, 1620', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5832
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