BALTHASAR VAN DER AST | Still life of flowers in a glass beaker on a stone ledge, together with insects and a lizard

Lensgreve S. Schulin, Frederiksdal Slot, Denmark, by 1960, but probably in the Schulin collection at Frederiksdal from much earlier; Probably by descent until anonymously sold, ('The Property of a Private Collection'), London, Christie's, 22 April 1988, lot 90, where acquired by Baron van Dedem.

The Hague, Mauritshuis, Uit de Schatkamer van de Verzamelaar, Hollandse Zeventiende-Eeuwse Schilderijen uit Nederlands Particulier Bezit, 1995, no. 1.

P. Gammelbo, Dutch Still-Life Painting from the 16th to the 18th Century in Danish Collections, Copenhagen 1960, pp. 30–31, no. 27, reproduced; S. Segal, in Masters of Middelburg, exh. cat., Amsterdam, 1984, pp. 50, 61, note 15;

P. van der Ploeg et al., in Uit de Schatkamer van de Verzamelaar, Hollandse Zeventiende-Eeuwse Schilderijen uit Nederlands Particulier Bezit, exh. cat., The Hague 1995, pp. 10–11;

P.C. Sutton, Dutch & Flemish Paintings, The Collection of Willem Baron van Dedem, London 2002, pp. 20–23, no. 1, reproduced.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Balthasar van der Ast. Still Life of Flowers in a Glass Beaker. Signed and dated at lower left B vander Ast.fec. 1622 This painting is on copper laid onto panel. It has clearly been carefully preserved throughout its history, with just faint unevenness in the upper area but almost no trace of damage, and none of wear. One slight scratch can just be seen in a raking light running across the leaves against the background at upper right. This is minimal as are the various minute damages along the extreme outer edges, with one very slightly wider at the lower right edge in the corner near the lizard. Under ultra violet light the varnish is rather opaque and quite old, but the condition is exceptionally fine and no retouching can be seen apart from the tiny line mentioned above, which itself is scarcely visible. The beautifully intact detail throughout is rare, with the most fragile colours unworn, as is the warm background, not to mention the minutiae of the insects' wings and antennae. While the panel itself was secured onto the panel behind probably in the mid to late twentieth century, the delicate paint surface appears to have been preserved untouched far longer, and rarely disturbed throughout its history. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
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Balthasar van der Ast was a painter of considerable versatility and energy. His known œuvre consists of over two hundred works in a wide variety of formats, ranging in size from small intimate panels and coppers such as this to large and more complex compositions.¹ This superlative and beautifully preserved example displays a glass beaker or noppenglas filled with a colourful variety of blooms, including an iris, tulips, narcissi, a daffodil, forget-me-nots, lily, cyclamen and a rose. The beaker is set upon  a stone ledge into which the artist has illusionistically ‘carved’ his name in paint, while the bouquet as a whole teems with insects, including a beetle, fly, spider, caterpillar and in the lower right hand corner, an animated  little sand lizard. This panel dates from the year 1622, in the middle of what was to be Van der Ast’s most successful and productive period, the first half of the 1620s, and may be considered among his very finest works of this date. This still life was painted in Utrecht, whence Vander Ast had moved in 1619 with the family of his brother in law and teacher Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573–1621), and where he would remain until he departed for Delft in 1632. Unsurprisingly Van der Ast’s earlier pieces such as this initially reflected the influence of his master before they begin to display an increasingly independent artistic personality around the middle of the decade. Like Bosschaert, Van der Ast painted predominantly fruit and flower pieces, composed like this along a strong vertical axis held by a large flower, very often, as in this case, a magnificent iris. The bouquet is set against a dark neutral background, with many leaves set in half-shadows, the better to emphasise the rich colours of its individual blooms themselves. What was new to Van der Ast’s work was the importance he attached to the realistic insects and animals which he used to animate his designs (such as the lizard in this panel), which suggest that he had looked carefully at the work of another Utrecht resident, Roelandt Savery (1576–1639), who had settled in the city in exactly the same year. Van der Ast was also famous for the introduction of exotic shells into many of his works, a reflection of the emergent fashion in the Netherlands for their collection and speculation. These accomplishments were greatly regarded by his contemporaries. In his Schildersregister (Register of Painters) written in the 1670s, the Amsterdam doctor and art lover Jan Sysmus  wrote succinctly: ‘B. Van der Ast, In flowers, shells and lizards, beautiful’.

Although there are no shells in this picture, they do recur in another small panel painted in the same year, of very similar dimensions and employing the same noppenglas beaker, today in the Saint Louis Museum of Art, Saint Louis, Missouri (fig. 1). Other pictures also painted in 1622, of much less exuberant design but which contain the same or similar elements include a Flower still life with shells, caterpillar and lizard in a private collection, in which a similar beaker and the same lizard recur,² and a Flower still life with shells and caterpillar sold in these Rooms, 9 December 1987, lot 67, and a small copper sold in these Rooms, 11 December 2003, lot 55. Other paintings from the same year, notably the remarkable and more minimal Carnations in a porcelain vase in the P. and N. de Boer Foundation, Amsterdam, show the remarkable range and invention that Van der Ast had already developed in his work by this date.³ Indeed, although still then an emerging artist, by 1622 he was already sufficiently well known to be mentioned in letters written by Aernout van Buchel (1565–1641) to the Utrecht humanist and art lover Johan de Wit in Rome.⁴

At the time of the 1995 exhibition of this work in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, scholars suggested a detailed interpretation of the possible symbolic elements contained in its design. Details such as the fly on the wilted pink rose and the fallen flowers on the ledge, for example, can evoke associations with contemporary Dutch notions of the transience of life. The caterpillar on the tulip, for example, refers to the Resurrection because ‘…the butterfly that emerges was seen as a metaphor for the human soul…’.⁵ While it is impossible for us to know whether Van der Ast intended such an interpretation for the present work, it is worth observing that in a small panel of Flowers in a glass beaker in a niche with a butterfly painted the following year  in 1623 (fig. 2), he very unusually inscribed the ledge of the niche with a poem that suggests such explicit vanitas associations were very much on his mind:

Wat ziet ghy op dees Blom. On us soo schooner schynt

Die.door.der.zonnen.cracht.zeer lichteliyck verdwynt

Let op Godts Woort alleen dwelck in eeuwich Bloeyen siet

 

‘What you see on this flower that seems so beautiful before you

That through the power of the sun very lightly fades away.

Be aware that only God’s word flourishes eternally.’⁶

 

By the time he left Utrecht for Delft in 1632, Van der Ast seems to have painted fewer pure flower pieces such as this. The backgrounds of his painting began to lighten after the mid- to late 1620s, and his brushwork becomes looser. However, as Van der Ast’s dated works range only from 1617 to 1628, a reliable chronology of his later career unfortunately remains elusive.

1 These can range from coppers of c. 5 cm. in height to canvases of two metres in width.

2 Segal in Amsterdam 1984, p. 51, cat. no. 12, reproduced.

3 Segal in Amsterdam 1984, no. 11, reproduced in colour.

4 Cited in Sutton 2002, p. 23.

5 Van der Ploeg in The Hague 1995, p. 10.

6 Sold London, Sotheby’s, 10 July 2002, lot 29. The verse draws its inspiration from the Old Testament, notably Isaiah 40, 6–8.