Object data
oil on panel
support: height 87.8 cm × width 112.6 cm
Willem Claesz Heda
Still Life with Gilt Goblet
1635
Inscriptions
- signature and date, at the bottom of the left-hand edge of the tablecloth on the right: HEDA. 1635
Technical notes
The support consists of four horizontally grained oak planks. The panel has been thinned and cradled. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1605. The panel could have been ready for use by 1616, but a date in or after 1622 is more likely. The thin, smooth ground is whitish. The composition was painted from the back to the front, and the objects were reserved in the background. It was smoothly painted, with more impasted paint to indicate the high relief of the objects and the texture of the tablecloth.
Scientific examination and reports
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 30 October 1998
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 11 June 2005
Condition
Good. There are some areas of retouching along the joins.
Provenance
...; collection Richedot family, formed in the 17th century in Holland, from the 18th century until the 1970s at the family seat, Château de Choisey, near Dole (Jura);1...; sale, Paris (Palais d’Orsay), 13 December 1977, no. 18;...; from Noortman and Brod Gallery, London, fl. 3,000,000, to the museum, with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt, the Jubileumfonds, the Dutch State and the Rijksmuseum-Stichting, 1984
Object number: SK-A-4830
Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt and the Rijksmuseum-Stichting
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Willem Claesz Heda (Haarlem 1594 - Haarlem 1680)
Willem Claesz Heda was born on 14 December 1594 as the third child of the Haarlem city architect Claes Pietersz Bagijn (1558-1632) and Anna Claesdr Rooswijk. He owed the surname Heda to his mother’s family. On 9 June 1619 he married Cornelia Jacobsdr, daughter of the Haarlem brewer Jacob Philipsz van Rijck. Since he was related to various Haarlem brewers’ families, he became professionally involved in the beer industry. He owned a few houses in Haarlem and seems to have been prosperous. In 1616 he became a member of the St George Civic Guard, in which he was a corporal from 1642 to 1645.
Nothing is known about Heda’s artistic training. He probably joined the Guild of St Luke in 1614, serving as warden in 1631-32, 1637-38, 1643 and 1651, and as dean in 1644 and 1652-53. He trained several painters in his workshop: Arnoldus Beresteyn (in 1637), Hendrik Heerschop (in 1642), Maerten Boelema de Stomme (1611-44) and his youngest son Gerrit Heda (c. 1624-49), who used the signature ‘jonge Heda’ on some of his works between 1642 and 1644.
Willem Claesz Heda started his career as a history painter with a Crucifixion triptych of 1626,2 but he was also known as a portrait painter. He and Pieter Claesz were mentioned as painters of banquet pieces in Samuel Ampzing’s Beschryvinge ende lof der stad Haerlem of 1628. Almost all his known paintings are still lifes, mostly breakfast and banquet pieces, with a few vanitas scenes. The compositions are often similar to those in the still lifes by Pieter Claesz. Most of his paintings are signed, and many are dated between 1628 and 1664.
Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007
References
Ampzing 1628, p. 372; Schneider in Thieme/Becker XVI, 1923, pp. 215-16; Van der Willigen/Meijer 2003, p. 103; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 189-95
Entry
The size and quality of this sumptuous still life make it the largest and most impressive of Willem Claesz Heda’s paintings. It is also in very good condition. The large still life of c. 1615 by Floris van Dijck in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-4821) represents the beginning of the Dutch tradition of this genre, and the banquet piece of 1627 by Pieter Claesz (SK-A-4646) shows it in its maturity. This work illustrates the next stage, and is a high point in the development of still-life painting. Viewed from a considerably lower vantage point than the above two, one sees the sumptuous ensemble laid out on the table. Pieter Claesz’s variegated colours have made way for a more muted palette in which grey tints, some of them tending towards blue, predominate alongside whites, greens and yellows. Above all, though, it is the metal and glass objects that are responsible for the lively interplay of shadows and reflections. The table is so crowded that the objects overlap. The cylindrical salt-cellar of engraved silver, the green rummer, the tazza lying on the white napkin, the gilt goblet and the large pewter jug form a tight-knit group that stands out against the brownish grey background. The dish of oysters, the pewter plates jutting out over the edge of the table with a twist of paper containing pepper and a broken loaf of bread, the rummer and a similar gilt goblet feature in earlier still lifes by Pieter Claesz and Heda.3 Several of the objects in this painting also feature in other still lifes by Heda: the tazza with its floral motifs (SK-A-137), the large pewter jug,4 and the superb little jug of vinegar made of Venetian glass.
Almost all of the objects in this still life recur in the Banquet Piece with Mince Pie in the National Gallery in Washington (also dated 1635), which is as wide as the one in Amsterdam but much higher and is on canvas.5 That painting has a similar tonality and is virtually the mirror image of the present one. Heda painted only a few such sumptuous still lifes, the earliest of which are on panel6, while most of those dating from after 1649 are on canvas.7
Interestingly, there are several 17th-century copies of this painting on canvas. A woman was added on the left in one of them, and a basket of cheese on the right (fig. a).8
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. 120.
Literature
Vroom 1980, I, pp. 60-61, II, p. 70, no. 351a; Segal in Delft etc. 1988, pp. 137-38; Kloek 1989; Gemar-Koeltszsch 1995, II, p. 425, no. 157/13
Collection catalogues
1992, p. 56, no. A 4830; 2007, no. 120
Citation
J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Willem Claesz. Heda, Still Life with Gilt Goblet, 1635', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8634
(accessed 22 November 2024 09:45:31).