Lot 105: JOHANNES CHRISTIANUS ROEDIG THE HAGUE 1750 - 1802

THE PROPERTY OF A DUTCH FAMILY

A STILL LIFE WITH PINK ROSES, SMALL MORNING GLORY, IRISSES, A HYACINTH, A POPPY ANEMONE, AURICULA, A TULIP AND OTHER FLOWERS IN A VASE SCULPTED WITH CLASSICAL FIGURES, TOGETHER WITH GRAPES, PEACHES, APRICOTS AND WALLNUTS, ALL ON A STONE LEDGE WITH A DRAGONFLY, TWO SNAILS AND A PEACOCK BUTTERFLY, IN A GARDEN SETTING WITH A STATUE OF FLORA IN THE BACKGROUND

measurements note
75.8 by 62.3 cm.

signed, dated and inscribed lower right: J: C: Roedig/ s: hage: 1792 :

oil on mahogany panel

PROVENANCE

Mrs Q.C.J. Sikkens-van der Meer Mohr, The Hague, circa 1900;
By descent to her daughter Mrs R. Sikkens, The Hague;
Thence by descent to the present owners in 2000.

NOTE

This exuberant flower piece is a fine example of the art of Johannes Christianus Roedig, who was active in The Hague and who specialised in highly refined fruit and flower pictures. Impeccably preserved on its stable (and expensive) thick mahogany panel, it is a tour-de-force of technical perfection. The balanced and centralised composition, and the fact that it is composed of both fruit and flowers combined, suggests that it was probably conceived as an individual work and not as one of a pair of pendants, one of fruit and one of flowers. In its asymmetric arrangement of the bouquet, the use of a terra cotta vase on a stone plinth, the light landscape background with statue and the inclusion of a butterfly, a snail and a dragonfly Roedig is here working in the idiom developed by his famous predecessors Jan van Huysum (1682-1749) and Jan van Os (1744-1808) (see the introduction by S. Segal, in: exhibition catalogue, Boeket in Willet, Museum Willet Holthuysen, Amsterdam, 1970). This idiom was especially conceived for the new 18th century clientèle who had been increasingly aware of the discoveries of the Enlightment, so that the still life came to be regarded in its context of nature and of her changing seasons. This explains the artist's choice of a garden background and the addition of the Goddess of Flora, who can only reign in the season of Summer. This is a marked change from the earlier, 17th Century tradition of flower-painting, in which blooms from different seasons are painted together, as if to overwhelm the viewer, who thus ignores the actual impossibility of seeing them all together, and may not realise that they have been removed from their natural context.

As with others of his generation, today Roedig is a somewhat forgotten artist. However, in his own time he must have had considerable success. His fame went as far as St. Petersburg, where Count Alexander Stroganoff donated Empress Catharina the Great a pair of Roedigs in 1783, which he had ordered especially. This pair subsequently entered the Hermitage, from where they were sold during the 1830s (see A. Somof, Ermitage Impérial Catalogue de la Galérie des Tableaux, vol. II: Ecoles Néerlandaises et Ecole Allemande, 1901, p. 377, nos. 1384 and 1385). One picture has since turned up in a private collection in the Netherlands, unfortunately with the signature erased, but still with the Stroganoff seal on the reverse. Of equal importance are the pendants of 1779, formerly with Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder, The Hague, in 1997 (see A Fruitful Past, exhibition at Amsterdam, P. de Boer, and Brunswick, Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum, 1983, nos. 70 and 71, reproduced). This pair once decorated the interior of the rich merchant Pieter Lyonet in Amsterdam. In the present picture Roedig attains the technical perfection of the Hermitage and Lyonet pair, and it is certainly one of the most outstanding surviving works by the artist.

Dated 1792, this work was painted two years prior to Roedig's appointment as Secretary of the Academy of The Hague. The addition ´s Hage to the signature and date suggests thar it was painted for a collector from The Hague. This was probably an ancestor of Mrs Sikkens--van der Meer Mohr, who owned the picture in The Hague by circa 1900.