Lot 61: Willem van Aelst (Delft 1627-1683 Amsterdam)

Willem van Aelst (Delft 1627-1683 Amsterdam) Peaches, grapes on the vine, black plums, cherries and a fly, all on a stone ledge signed and dated 'W·V A 1644·' (lower right) oil on an octagonal panel 22.8 x 30.2 cm.

22.8 x 30.2 cm.

Anonymous sale; Doyle, New York, 26 January 2000, lot 160, as Attributed to Willem van Aelst.

Willem van Aelst was only 16 years old, when he completed his apprenticeship in 1643 and enrolled in the Guild of St. Luke in Delft. The present still life, signed and dated a year later in 1644, is together with another work, also on octagonal panel and dated 1644, the earliest dated painting known by the artist. The latter still life, Grapes, a peach, and walnuts on a stone ledge (23 x 30,3 cm, private collection) appears to be the pendant to the present lot. Both compositions, with only a few fruits, are comparable in its simplicity and sobriety to another, early still life, dated 1646, by Van Aelst titled Peaches, a plum, and grapes on a ledge, formerly in the Weldon Collection and recently sold with Sotheby's, New York, 22 April 2015, lot 70 ($ 68,750). Willem van Aelst was born in Delft, where he trained as a still life painter with his uncle, Evert van Aelst. After he completed his apprenticeship he was documented in 1645 in France, and in 1649 he was working in Florence as court painter to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando II de' Medici. At the Medici court Willem befriended a fellow Dutch still-life painter, Otto Marseus van Schrieck, whose refined, detailed style influenced the young artist. In 1656 van Aelst returned to the Dutch Republic and settled in Amsterdam, where he established a successful career as a painter of ornate, brightly coloured still lives of unparalleled surface detail. Among his most accomplished pupils in that city was Rachel Ruysch.