Still Life with Fish, Sea Food and Flowers

c. 1612 - c. 1615

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 25 cm × width 34.8 cm
outer size: depth 4.5 cm (support incl. frame and climate box)

Inscriptions

signature, bottom left, on the table edge: CLARA P.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder, RMA, 16 March 2006
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 3 March 2007

Conservation

H. Kat, 1997: blisters laid and varnish revived

Provenance

…; from the dealer Jacques Goudstikker, Amsterdam, fl. 200, to the museum, 1903; on loan to the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 1999-2000; on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 2004-05

Object number: SK-A-2111

The artist

Clara Peeters (active Antwerp 1607 - died after 1634)

There are no certain, documented facts about the life of the still-life painter, Clara Peeters, by whom there are some thirty variously signed paintings.¹ Individual works are dated from 1607 to 1621; the signed works form a stylistically coherent whole, but for that of 1621 which exceptionally is a Virgin and Child in a Garland.²

Meijer is sceptical about her identification with the Clara Peeters who was baptized in the Sint-Walburgiskerk, Antwerp, on 15 May 1594,³ and rejects that with the bride married in the same church on 31 May 1639,⁴ although the first proposal should not be ruled out entirely (see below). He believes that Peeters may have ceased working soon after 1621, as her extant work shows no apparent knowledge of still-life fashions after circa 1620, nor do the objects she delineated suggest a manufacture later than this time.⁵

Peeters never enrolled in the Antwerp guild of St Luke, but she may well have been active in the city as six of her paintings are on supports made by Antwerp panel makers;⁶ Meijer produces further evidence of her being active there in her influence on the work of Nicolaes Cave, a resident of Antwerp and active from 1619 until 1651.⁷ Vergara dates a document to 1634 which refers to Clara Pieters of Antwerp.⁸

In spite of her great competence and originality, she may not have painted professionally as only one of her paintings is listed in published inventories of seventeenth-century Antwerp collections and none is listed in any published auction sale catalogue in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century. However, the first reference to her activity is in the inventory of the collection of Herman Safleven II (1609-1685), made in Rotterdam on 5 May 1627, in which among a number of works by southern Netherlandish artists was ‘The Fishes after Clara Peeters’ (De Viskens naer Clara Peeters).⁹

A Portrait of a Woman with a Vanitas Still Life was recorded in an eighteenth-century handwritten catalogue as by ‘Clara’,¹⁰ and therefore was presumably signed with the artist’s Christian name; the collar worn suggests a date circa 1610-15, and it may be wondered if the sitter was not in fact the artist herself aged about twenty.¹¹

REFERENCES
P. Hibbs Decoteau, Clara Peeters 1594-ca. 1640 and the Development of Still-Life Painting in Northern Europe, Lingen 1992; A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, pp. 158-59; A. Vergara, ‘Reflections of Art and Culture in the Paintings of Clara Peeters’, in A. Vergara (ed.), The Art of Clara Peeters, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten)/ Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado) 2016, pp. 13-47, passim

Entry

On the terracotta dish are freshwater fish: a carp (perhaps two, only the tail of the (?) second is visible) and a roach with an eel. The shells are from the Far East; on the left, an amphidromus perversus (an Indonesian land snail), behind it, a conus marmoreus, with a mitra mitra and a harpa amouretta, all of which were from the Pacific Ocean.¹² The oysters on the pewter plate are the common European oyster. Behind is a boiled mussel. Shrimps are laid out nearby. The bouquet in the roemer is made up of spring and summer blooms: an anemone, daffodil, daisy, columbine, and violet and strawberry leaves.

There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this signed work, which is on a support of a single piece of oak timber from the German/Netherlandish area which would have been ready for use from at least 1586. Noteworthy is the limited use of reserves. It is likely that Clara Peeters improvised after aligning the pewter plate and terracotta dish. The bouquet seems almost an afterthought. The combination of flowers and fish is exceptional. Meijer¹³ suggests that Peeters here contrasted the scent of flowers with the smell of fish, but it is moot that Peeters would have depicted fish that were already putrid. The conceit of including the signature in the composition itself by painting over it an element of a motif – the antennae of the shrimp – is unusual.

Various dates have been suggested for the painting: Vroom proposed 1608,¹⁴ Hibbs Decoteau 1611¹⁵ and Segal the 1620s.¹⁶ In view of our lack of knowledge concerning Clara Peeters’s biography and the paucity of dated works (one each of 1607 and (?) 1608, three of 1611, five of 1612 and one of 1621),¹⁷ dating the present work is conjectural. The motif of a carp on a dish was used by Peeters in four other works, one of 1611;¹⁸ the head of a shrimp in three other paintings, one of (?) 1608.¹⁹ A different set of exotic shells appears in still lifes of 1611 and 1612.²⁰ The similarity of the arrangement of flowers with that in the bouquet of 1612²¹ and the relatively low viewpoint as in the still lifes of comestibles of 1612²² make a date for the Rijksmuseum picture of circa 1612 seem likely, although Meijer has suggested circa 1615.²³ This would have been long after the support of German/Netherlandish oak was available for use.

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

P. Hibbs Decoteau, Clara Peeters 1594-ca.1640 and the Development of Still-Life Painting in Northern Europe, Lingen 1992, pp. 21, 179, (ill.) 7; Segal in M. Meijer et al., Elck zijn waerom. Vrouwelijke kunstenaars in België en Nederland, 1500-1950, exh. cat. Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten)/Arnhem (Museum voor Moderne Kunsten) 1999-2000, p. 143; Meijer in E. de Jongh et al., Fish: Still Lifes by Dutch and Flemish Masters, 1550-1750, exh. cat. Utrecht (Centraal Museum)/Helsinki (Amos Anderson Art Museum) 2004, p. 225, no. 6

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 205 no. 1848; 1934, p. 220, no. 1848; 1976, p. 437, no. A 2111

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'Clara Peeters, Still Life with Fish, Sea Food and Flowers, c. 1612 - c. 1615', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5020

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