Lot 36: ADRIAEN COORTE MIDDELBURG (?) 1660 (?) - AFTER 1707

STILL LIFE WITH TWO PEACHES AND A FRITILLARY BUTTERFLY ON A STONE LEDGE

measurements note
27 by 18.9 cm.; 10 5/8 by 7 1/2 in.

signed with monogram lower right: AC

oil on paper, laid on oak panel

PROVENANCE

Believed to have been in the ownership of a French family from before the First World War until recently.

NOTE

Adriaen Coorte's works were very little known until the 20th century. He worked in the Zeeland town of Middelburg, but seems not to have been a member of the Guild there,¹ and must have sold his works unofficially. That we know virtually nothing of his life contributes to the mysteriousness of his pictures, almost all of which, except a few early works, are startlingly simple still lifes, of ruthlessly pared-down compositions, depicting one or a few objects, often strongly lit, set on a stone ledge, against a dark background. Nothing like them is to be found in Dutch 17th-century painting, and they could not be more out of kilter with Dutch art around 1700, when lavishness and opulence predominated, especially in still-life painting. They are perhaps more reminiscent of still-life painting in Strasbourg and Paris, in the first half of the 17th century, but any resemblance to the works of painters such as Sebastian Stosskopf, Lubin Baugin, Louise Moillon and François Garnier is likely to be purely coincidental, just as any attempt to see Coorte as a precursor of Chardin is without substance.

This hitherto unrecorded picture is a welcome addition to Coorte's small oeuvre. Only a handful of his pictures are signed with the monogram used here, and none of these are dated, but the extreme simplicity of the upright composition, with just two peaches set on an unadorned stone ledge with a vertical crack, and a single butterfly above, set against a dark background, is typical of his pictures dating from the decade around 1700. Good examples are the painting of Two Peaches, signed and dated 1696 sold at Christie's in 1974,² and that of Three Peaches formerly in the W.F. van Beeck Calkoen collection in Amsterdam, which is signed and dated 1705.³ Also very similar in composition is the undated picture of Three Medlars with a Cabbage White Butterfly, signed with the same monogram as here, in the V.d.S. collection in Holland.⁴

Many of Coorte's later pictures - after the mid-1690s - are painted on paper, laid down on canvas or as here, on panel. The paintings of Two Peaches and Three Medlars with a Cabbage White Butterfly mentioned above share this unusual support. No unsupported paintings on paper by him are known, and many of the panel supports, like the present one, appear to be old, and thus it may be the case that the paintings were laid down on them before leaving the studio. Those laid on panel retain the smooth texture of the oil on paper medium, and as here, the chain lines of the paper give a subtle and gentle grain to parts of the surface, as if painted on a fine linen support. Unfortunately, those laid down on canvas have often acquired the coarser texture of the canvas weave (often a lining canvas). Some at least of these were probably originally glued to panels.

1. He is recorded in the ledgers of the Guild of St. Luke in 1695/6, but never as a member.
2. Sold, London, Christie's, 28 June 1974, lot 77; see L.J. Bol, Adriaen Coorte. A Unique Late Seventeenth Century Dutch Still-Life Painter, Assen/Amsterdam 1977, p. 47, no. 17, reproduced p. 85, plate 11.
3. Idem, pp. 58-9, no. 70, reproduced p. 111, plate 35.
4. Idem, p. 60, no. 75, reproduced p. 115, plate 37.