Lot 20: JAN BAPTIST VAN FORNENBURGH

JAN BAPTIST VAN FORNENBURGH ACTIVE IN THE HAGUE CIRCA 1585/95 - 1648/9 STILL LIFE WITH A PARROT TULIP, A PINK ROSE, A MOUSE, A LIZARD AND A BEE ON A STONE PEDESTAL, WITH A RED ADMIRAL AND A SPIDER ON ITS WEB ABOVE signed with initials lower centre: IB.F. oil on oak panel 36 by 29 cm.; 14 1/4 by 11 1/2 in.

L.J. Bol, Holländische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts nahe den grossen Meistern, Braunschweig 1969, pp. 46-7, reproduced p. 48, fig. 40 (as whereabouts unknown).

Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Gentleman'), London, Christie's, 14 December 1990, lot 86, for £82,500, when bought by the present owner.

Laurens Bol (see Literature) saw an almost puritanical simplicity in this intimate still life, composed on a diagonal, which he viewed as prefiguring Adriaen Coorte's similarly composed still lifes of fifty or more years later. In fact, Fornenburgh's still lifes including this one, reflect the influence of his townsman Jacques de Gheyn.

For a related composition, in which the butterfly, the lizard and the mouse recur, the latter two in reverse, see P. Gammelbo, Dutch Still-Life Painting from the 16th to the 18th Centuries in Danish Collections, 1960, pp. 34-5, no. 33, reproduced. The same rose recurs in another simple Fornenburgh composition with a lizard and a tulip aranged on a stone ledge set on a diagonal in a painting formerly with Cramer, The Hague.υ1


1. See L.J. Bol, Goede Onbekenden, Utrecht 1982, p. 88, reproduced p. 89, fig. 5.