Lot 189: Jasper Geeraerts (Antwerp c. 1620-before 1654)

A pronk still life of a roemer, a partly peeled lemon, a lobster, a lemon on a pewter plate, a peach, grapes, lemons, a melon, a glass flute, a silver tankard, a crystal goblet, a conch shell and a basket heaped with pomegranates, grapes and peaches with a white napkin, on a partly-draped wooden table with a velvet curtain in the background signed 'IASPER GERAD' (lower left, on the table) oil on canvas 73.8 x 96.7 cm. PROVENANCE Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (1614-1662), Governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Baron Frederick von Haagen, Berlin. J. Scully, Dublin. Anon. Sale, Christie's, London, 16 April 1926, lot 102 (unsold). Anon. Sale, Christie's, London, 19 July 1926, lot 152 (46 guineas to Dr. Fry). with Kleinberger Galleries, New York, 1931. Anon. Sale, American Art Association, New York, 20 April 1939, lot 35. E. Tross, Los Angeles. Dr. M.I. Boas, Los Angeles. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (inv. no. 5579); Christie's, New York, 17 January 1986, lot 4. with J. van Haeften, London, 1986. LITERATURE Art News, October 1931, p. 20, illustrated, as Jan Davidsz. de Heem. E. Greindl, Les Peintres Flamands de Nature Morte au XVIIe SiŠcle, Brussels, 1956, p. 168. W. Bernt, The Netherlandish Painters of the Seventeenth Century, Munich, 1969, I, p. 43, no. 417, illustrated. A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden, 2003, p. 88. EXHIBITION Cambridge, Massachusets, Fogg Art Museum, 1931, as Jan Davidsz. de Heem. New York, College Art Association, October-November 1931, as Jan Davidsz. de Heem. NOTES Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (1614-1662), second son of Emperor Ferdinand II, entered Brussels as governor of the Spanish Netherlands in 1646 and resigned in 1656, when he settled in Vienna. In ten years he created one of the most important collections in Europe - the inventory of his collection made in 1659 numbered 1,397 paintings - the ample nucleus of today's Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, which he had earlier displayed in the Palais Coudenberg in Brussels. Perhaps his greatest coups as a collector were his acquisition of paintings from the collection of King Charles I, which were put up for sale following his execution in 1649, and, most importantly of all, his purchase of the bulk (some four hundred paintings) of the collection owned by the 3rd Marquess and 1st Duke of Hamilton (1606-1649), a close associate and favourite of the King, also executed in 1649. Hamilton had ended up the sole purchaser in 1638 of the collection of Bartolomeo della Nave, which in itself was one of the most important collections in Venice at the time (for a summary of the Archduke's activity as a collector, see Daz-Padron and Royo-Villanova, catalogue of the exhibition, David Teniers, Jan Brueghel y Los Gabinetes de Pinturas, Museo del Prado, 1992, pp. 32-36).