Lot 27: Balthasar van der Ast (Middelburg 1593/4-1657 Delft)

Irises, roses, columbine, hyacinth and a tulip in a black pottery pitcher, with seashells and a grasshopper on a stone ledge signed '.B.vander.Ast.' (lower right) oil on panel 22 5/8 x 17 1/8 in. (57.5 x 43.5 cm.) PROVENANCE Anon. Sale, 25 November 1868, lot 1, as 'Van Aelst - Fleurs et insectes' (catalogue entry glued to the back of the panel; this sale may be either the Paris or Lille sale recorded by Lugt, nos. 30760-1). Severence Sawyer, Dalton. Anon. Sale [A Private Collector, Massachusetts], Sotheby's, New York, 30 May 1979, lot 100 (sold $145,000). with Richard Green, London, from whom purchased in October 1979 by the subsequent vendor. Anon. Sale [The Property of a Gentleman], Christie's, London, 9 July 1999, lot 16 (sold œ331,500). LITERATURE J. Briels, Peintres Flamands en Hollande au d‚but du SiŠcle d'Or 1585-1630, Antwerp and Haarlem, 1987, pp. 244-8, fig. 309. EXHIBITION Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art, A Loan Exhibition of Netherlandish Art, 18 February-2 March 1941, no. 10. NOTES Van der Ast rarely dated his paintings after 1626 and thus no firm chronology can be established for the work of the last three decades of his career. Mr. Fred Meijer feels that this type of flower piece (fairly spaciously composed, with a light background, a grey stone ledge and a few seashells) should probably be dated to fairly late in the artist's development, certainly after 1640. Other examples, all undated, include the picture in the Mauritshuis, The Hague, inv. no. 1108 (included in the exhibition Bouquets from the Golden Age, Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1992, no. 4, illustrated in colour), that formerly in the Wetzlar Collection (L.J. Bol, The Bosschaert Dynasty, Leigh-on-Sea, 1960, p. 71, no. 15, included in the exhibition Masters of Middelburg, Kunsthandel Waterman, Amsterdam, March 1984, pp. 144-5, no. 14, illustrated), and that at Sotheby's, London, 7 December 1994, lot 59 ( ibid., pp. 72-3, no. 23, pl. 38). A more elaborate composition incorporating a bouquet of flowers was at Christie's, New York, 18 May 1994, lot 86 ( ibid., p. 85, no. 115). The pink rose to the lower right recurs in several other flower pieces of similar date, including that at Sotheby's, London, 16 April 1980 ( ibid., p. 74, no. 31) and that with Xavier Scheidwimmer ( The European Fine Art Fair, Maastricht, Handbook, 1998, illustrated in colour p. 143). A panel on loan to the National Gallery, London, slightly smaller than the present work (Bol, op. cit., p. 73, no. 26; included in the exhibition Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht during the Golden Age, San Francisco, Baltimore and National Gallery, London, 1997-8, pp. 360-3, no. 76, illustrated in colour), includes among several analogous elements a very similar pitcher. Probably of (Delft ?) pottery with a black glaze, this is one of a number of unusual containers featured in the painter's later work. It does not seem to recur in any other work by Van der Ast, or indeed in the work of any other artist. We are grateful to Mr. Fred Meijer of the RKD for his assistance in cataloguing this picture.