Lot 23: JACOB VAN HULSDONCK

THE PROPERTY OF A FAMILY ANTWERP 1582 - 1647 STILL LIFE OF TULIPS, CARNATIONS, A ROSE AND OTHER FLOWERS IN A GLASS BEAKER RESTING ON A WOODEN LEDGE oil on oak panel, prepared reverse 40 by 28 cm.; 15 3/4 by 11 in.

E. Greindl, Les Peintres Flamands de Nature Morte au XVIIe Siècle, Brussels 1983, pp. 42, 364, cat. no. 42, reproduced in colour plate 23; M.-L. Hairs, The Flemish Flower Painters in the XVIIth Century, Brussels 1985, p. 482.

J.E.H. Ball; By whom anonymously sold (`The Property of a Gentleman'), London, Sotheby's, 30 June 1971, lot 101, as Anthony Claesz. I, for £12,500 to Richard Green; With J.O. Leegenhoek, Paris, 1971 (as Jan van Kessel); Acquired by the late father of the present owner, probably from the above.

Pure flower still lifes by Hulsdonck are very rare, and only a handful are signed. They are evenly divided between copper and panel supports. None of his paintings of any subject are dated, so it is difficult to suggest a chronology for his work; even panel-makers' marks are of little help in dating them since he liked to use panels prepared with gesso on the reverse, which makes the wood more stable and less susceptible to warping. Hulsdonck seems to have spent some time early in his life in Middelburg, where he may have enountered the early work of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder. In Antwerp, where he is believed to have settled in 1608, he was inevitably influenced by Jan Brueghel the Elder, but his work has a greater formal elegance and refined simplicity than Brueghel's generally much more elaborate flower-pieces, and this may well be due to Bosschaert's formative influence. In a few cases his flower pieces consist solely of carnations, but more usually, as here, he favours a mixture of a restricted number of blooms with tulips predominating. Most of them are set against a dark background, and he favoured simple clear glass beakers with prunts in the lower register only, so that the stems of each flower can be followed through to the base. These characteristics can be seen in another unsigned flower piece by Hulsdonck on a copper support of similar size to the present panel in a German private collection.1 The present picture is more sparsely composed, with a similar number of larger blooms but fewer interspersing smaller flowers, but in style and handling they are comparable. The former false attribution to Van Kessel is understandable, since Hulsdonck's was to some extent a forerunner of Van Kessel. In his choice of fewer, larger flowers and clarity of depiction he was also in part a precursor of Daniel Seghers. Edith Greindl, writing in 1983 (see Literature) was the first to recognise Jacob van Hulsdonck as the author of the present work. 1. Se K. Ertz, in K. Ertz & W. Seipel (ed.), Das Flämische Stilleben 1550-1680, Lingen 2002, pp. 302-03, cat. no. 103, reproduced.