Lot 7: Floris van Dijck , Delft circa 1575 - 1651 Haarlem Still Life of Walnuts, Hazelnuts, Strawberries, a Roemer and an Overturned Wine Glass, all resting on a table oil on copper

signed in monogram and dated lower right FVD (in ligature) fecit A o 1611 oil on copper

measurements note 10 1/2 by 7 3/4 in.; 26.7 by 19.7 cm.

In the family of present collector since before 1935.

PROPERTY OF A WEST COAST COLLECTOR
We are grateful to Fred Meijer of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague, who has examined the present painting firsthand and has confirmed it to be a work by van Dijck. Dated 1611, it constitutes an important early addition to this rare, but influential, artist's known oeuvre, and is his only known work on copper. Floris van Dijck was one of the most important of the early painters of still-life subjects in Haarlem, but remarkably little is known about his life. He was born in Delft, according to the announcement of his betrothal in Haarlem around 1575, and trained in Haarlem where he registered as a member of the Guild of St. Luke in 1610 and was elected deacon in 1637. As part of a wealthy patrician family, van Dijck is reported traveling and painting in Italy and was in Rome circa 1600, where he met the Italian painter and draftsman Cavaliere d'Arpino. His active career spans the 1610s and 20s; the earliest extant pictures by him are two panels signed and dated in 1610υ1 and his last, a still life of fruits, in 1628.υ2 In the present picture, the artist has combined a number of his favorite table elements, including fruits, nuts and glassware. Yet here, there exists a less elaborate table spread of fewer objects on a rather narrow tabletop and on a much smaller and more intimate scale than the grand bravura displayed in his extravagant banquet spreads, such as that in the Frans Hals Museum.υ3 The composition of cracked and half-eaten walnuts and hazelnuts sparsely and carefully placed about the roemer and overturned wine glass, is a departure from these bancketgen (small banquets), for which van Dijck, together with his contemporaries, Nicolaes Gillisz and Floriz van Schooten, established many of the essential characteristics. Van Dijck's artistic sensibilities shine brilliantly, if not more, in this smaller painting with his rather meticulous display and arrangement of foodstuffs, characterized by a high vantage point, even lighting and a dark background. His studious care for strawberries recurs in a charming watercolor study on paper in the Royal Library, the Hague, dated 1624 (see fig. 1). The group of strawberries are so carefully conceived and built up in such seamless brushstrokes that it is not difficult for one to imagine the feel of the strawberries on the fingertips. The reflections of latticed windows upon the roemer and wine glass provide a glance into the presence outside the picture plane, making a departure from the self-contained world of the still life. The mingling of textures, shadows, and colors shows an unexpected delight of familiar objects, unrivaled in his other large-scale still lifes. 1 Currently in private collections: one sold, London, Sotheby's, December 8, 2004, lot 16, reproduced; the other reproduced in S. Segal, A Prosperous Past, Delft 1988, p. 86.
2 See E. de Jongh, Still-life in the age of Rembrandt, exhibition catalogue, Auckland City Art Gallery 1982, pp. 58-59, cat. no. 2, reproduced.
3 Inv. no. 79; see E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, Lingen 1995, vol. 2, p. 292, no. 98/2, reproduced p. 292.