Lot 21: JAN DAVIDSZ. DE HEEM

JAN DAVIDSZ. DE HEEM UTRECHT 1606 - 1683/4 ANTWERP STILL LIFE WITH FRUIT AND A CHINESE WAN-LI DISH signed and dated lower centre: J.D. Heem Fecit 1627 oil on oak panel 61 by 63.5 cm.; 24 by 25 in.

E. Greindl, Les Peintres Flamands de Nature Morte au XVIIe siècle, Brussels 1983, pp.123 and 360, cat. no. 23, reproduced p. 243, fig. 122;
F. Meijer, "Jan Davidsz. de Heem's Earliest Paintings, 1626-28," in Mercury, no. 7, 1988, pp. 30-31, reproduced p. 32, fig. 5.

With Frieda Hinze Gallery, Berlin 1965;
Private collection, New York;
Sale, London, Sotheby's, 9 December 1992, lot 26, for £90,200;
Anonymous sale ('Property of a Private Collector sold without Reserve'), New York, Sotheby's, 24 January 2002, lot 18;
With Dr Andrew Wieg, Amsterdam, from whom acquired by the present owner in 2002.

Dated 1627, this is one of Jan Davidsz. De Heem's earliest works, painted when the artist was just nineteen years old and it betrays the unmistakable influence of Balthasar van der Ast who was in Utrecht from 1619 to 1632. It seems very likely, if not certain, that the young De Heem underwent some sort of training in Van der Ast's Utrecht workshop as each of his still lifes executed between 1626-28 is conceived wholly in the Van der Ast tradition and some have indeed often been mistaken for the elder artist's work. This is a painting that is inconceivable without prior knowledge of, for example, Van der Ast's 1623 Still life with Parrots (Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst),υ1 a composition taken from a similarly low viewpoint, with fruit arranged over two horizontal ledges, the upper ledge laden with a wan-li porcelain dish.

Each of De Heem's earliest paintings is characterised by a stacking-up of the objects over several shelves or ledges, lending a sense of overcrowding to the composition. However, where the few paintings from 1626 and one other from 1627 are purely imitations of Van der Ast, it is in the present work that the first signs of De Heem's independence are discernible. Here for the first time he places a single, large form to one side of the painting, dominating it (the pewter pitcher to the left) and into the 1630s this emphasis on one vertical object would lead to a preference for the upright format.

1. See F.G. Meijer, under Literature, reproduced p. 33, fig. 7.