Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 137.3 cm × width 119.2 cm × thickness 4 cm
Joris van Son
Simulated Sculpted Head of a Woman in a Cartouche Decorated with Swags of Fruit
1655 - 1665
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: M. van de Laar / L. Akerlund, RMA, 28 July 2013
Conservation
- D. van der Kellen, 1885: the four wooden supports rejoined
- H. Harnau, 1897: the support marouflaged
- conservator unknown: wax-lined
Provenance
…; sale, dealers Dr P.A. Borger (Arnhem) (†), Mr. D.J.H. Joosten (Haarlem) (†), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 13 November 1882, no. 21 ('J.D.HEEM. Riches compositions de branches d’arbres fruitiers, couronnant des fragments d’architecture. Quatre pièces. Superbes morceaux d’un décor de salle à manger. Chaque fragment présente un tableau à part.'), fl. 600, to the museum;1 on loan to the Muzieklyceum, Amsterdam, 1973-74
Object number: SK-A-763
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Joris van Son (Antwerp 1623 - Antwerp 1667)
The still-life painter Joris van Son was baptized in the Antwerp Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk on 24 September 1623.2 The occupation of his father is not known but his mother was a Fourmenois and thus perhaps linked to the Antwerp painter and picture dealer Matthijs Musson (1598-1678). Van Son was enrolled as a master of the Antwerp guild of St Luke in 1643/44, without having been previously cited in the guild records as an apprentice.3 His manner clearly demonstrates the influence of the leading still-life painter in Antwerp at the time, Jan Davidsz de Heem, who had enrolled in the guild as a master in 1635/36, having left his native northern Netherlands where he was last recorded in 1632.4 Van Son’s earliest extant work is a banquet still life of 1645;5 he was to prove a versatile artist in his chosen specialty, painting fruit, flower, breakfast and vanitas pieces, as well as pronkstilleven and decorated cartouches in a manner adopted from Daniel Seghers as SK-A-763-766 below. Although the published documentation of the Mussin and Forchondt dealerships refer only very occasionally to Van Son’s work and few examples are listed in the Antwerp estate inventories of the seventeenth century published by Duverger, Cornelis de Bie in Het gulden cabinet of 1662 devotes over a page to him and reproduces his engraved portrait after Erasmus Quellinus II (1607-1678).6 Further an example of his work was displayed in depictions of two Antwerp interiors of the 1650s.7 Thus was indicated the esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries. Greindl listed 69 signed paintings and 35 attributed works in a career of just over two decades,8 and her list is not comprehensive. Van Son was buried on 25 June 1667 in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwkerk.9
REFERENCES
A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 186
Entry
Considering the degree of interference suffered by the present painting which had been cut up and acquired as nos. SK-763-766 and then transferred onto a single support, the still-life elements are well preserved although the paint of the cartouche surround has darkened and is barely visible and the feigned sculpted head is much repainted. The swags of fruit are evidently the work of Joris van Son (not Jan Frans van Son to whom last attributed in the 1976 museum catalogue), a designation confirmed by Meijer who dates their execution circa 1655-65.10
Erasmus Quellinus II (1607-1678) often introduced the figural element in the centre of cartouches embellished by Van Son;11 but the handling of the admittedly damaged sculpted bust in the present painting seems not to be by him. Comparable are the busts of the goddess Ceres set in garlands of fruit by Frans Snijders, but these latter features have been dated some two decades earlier.12 The socle in the example in Brussels is inscribed Ceres,13 thus permitting the possible identification of the bust in the present work, although there are no discernible attributes.
Van Son, much influenced by Jan Davidsz de Heem, has here adopted a formula popularized by Daniel Seghers (1590-1661), who opted for a balanced composition of four swags decorating a cartouche on several occasions, for instance, in the painting of 1644 in the Museo Nacional del Prado.14 Seghers, however, portrayed flowers rather than, as here, fruit – more Van Son’s speciality. Dated examples of Van Son’s use of the decorated cartouche surround are of 1657,15 166216 and 1665.17
From the description in the 1882 sale catalogue it can be inferred that the original had been recently cut up – perhaps for the purpose of increasing the amount realized at the auction – as De Stuers was able to discern the feigned sculpted head centre, of which no mention was made. The practice of cutting up paintings for the purpose of adding value at sale has been the subject of a recent exhibition in the Museum Bredius, The Hague.18
Gregory Martin, 2022
Literature
E. Greindl, Les peintres flamands de nature morte au XVIIe siècle, Sterrebeek 1983 [ed. princ. 1956], p. 189 (as Jan Frans van Son)
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 248, no. 2212 (as Jan Frans van Son); 1911, p. 243, no. 2212; 1976, p. 517, no. A 736-A 766 (as attributed to Jan Frans van Son)
Citation
G. Martin, 2022, 'Joris van Son, Simulated Sculpted Head of a Woman in a Cartouche Decorated with Swags of Fruit, 1655 - 1665', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5471
(accessed 14 November 2024 20:07:01).