Object data
oil on panel
support: height 40.5 cm × width 56 cm
Willem Claesz Heda
Still Life with a Silver Tazza
1630
Inscriptions
- signature and date, traces on the edge of the table on the left: Heda.1630
Technical notes
The support is a single horizontally grained oak panel bevelled on all sides. The thin smooth ground has an off-white colour. The paint was applied with smoothly blended brushstrokes, with delicate and sharply defined impasto for the highlights. The composition was painted from the back to the front.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 29 June 2005
Condition
Fair. The paint layer on top of the wood grain in the background is degraded and abraded. The thick varnish is discoloured.
Conservation
- P. Koning, Amsterdam, c., 1980 - c. 1990: complete restoration
Provenance
...; purchased by a private collector from P. de Boer, Amsterdam, c. 1935;1...; on loan to the museum since April 2005; on loan to the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, since April 2005
Object number: SK-C-1694
Credit line: On loan from a private collector
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
Going by the almost indecipherable date of 1630, this hitherto unpublished breakfast piece is one of Heda’s early paintings. His earliest still lifes, dated 1628 and 1629, are variants of similar works by Pieter Claesz, as is this one.3 It seems that the two artists embarked on a fruitful period of competition at this time, using the same or similar objects as models. From 1630 on there is no distinction in quality to be made between them in their treatment of this type of breakfast piece, although there are differences in the handling of light and in the technique. Both painted series of fine variants of the theme in a horizontal format (approximately 45 x 60-70 cm) with a fairly monochrome palette. A large rummer of wine is a stock element in their scenes, in combination with a varying selection of other objects, such as a tazza, a watch, a small loaf of bread and a pewter plate with a half-peeled lemon or olives, on tables that are either bare or covered with green or white cloths against a light background.
The tazza lying on its side is found in almost all of Heda’s still lifes from 1630 onwards. At least four different tazzas feature in his paintings, with this one being used several times between 1630 and 1633 before being depicted by Pieter Claesz from 1635-36 on.4 A sober variant of this painting by Pieter Claesz is the Still Life with a Rummer and Tazza dated 1636 in Berlin,5 where the foot of the tazza is also reflected in the pewter plate. The watch, however, is missing.
A silver tazza, 16 cm high, that is closely related in type and ornamentation and was made in Haarlem, has the date mark 1617 and is preserved in the Roman Catholic church of St Francis Xavier in Enkhuizen.6 It is not known whether Heda loaned or sold the tazza to Claesz or if he acquired it in a lottery, but they clearly used the same model. In the case of Heda, whose still lifes contain many costly silver objects, it is likely that they were made by the Haarlem silversmith Pieter Jansz Bagijn (c. 1600-48),7 who was a relative of his.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. 118.
Collection catalogues
2007, no. 118
Citation
J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Willem Claesz. Heda, Still Life with a Silver Tazza, 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.430089
(accessed 8 November 2024 23:12:41).