Jacobus Linthorst

With Frost and Reed, London;
With Doic, Wilson and Wheatley, Edinburgh (according to an old label on the reverse).

Both paintings are warmer in tone than the catalogue illustration suggest. Both single panels are flat and stable and bevelled to all sides, although the former has a thin vertical split running through the centre upper half. Both paint surfaces are under a fairly clear layer of varnish. The paint layers are secure if somewhat abraded, paticularly in the greener tones, and subsequent tiny retouchings can be made out with the naked eye. Some larger areas of retouching are visible in the background. Under UV light more extensive retouchings are revealed in both works. Offered in decorative gilt plaster and wood frames in good condition.
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Little is known about Jacobus Linthorst's artistic training, but the light palette, opulence and dazzling effects of his works clearly reflect the influence of Jan van Huysum (1682-1749) and Jan van Os (1744-1808), who are considered the most dominant Dutch flower painters of the 18th Century. Linthorst appears to have spent all his lifetime in his native town of Amsterdam and is recorded as a member of the Guild of Saint Luke in 1789. He was the teacher of the still life painter Jan Evert Morel (1769-1808).

This fruit and flower still life reveal Linthorst's fondness for dense and solid compositions of overlapping richness. Both paintings also demonstrate Linthorst's distinctive technique. He often used strong whites with thin strokes of colour, rather than glazing to a tinted colour, thus giving his pastel flowers and fruit a delicate and almost translucent appearance, as can be seen in particular in the grapes and cherries in this fruit still life.

The present fruit still life can be compared to another, signed and dated 1813, sold, New York, Sotheby's, 5 June 2008, lot 128, which displays a similar arrangement of motifs alike, whereas the flower still life can be compared to a work, signed and dated 1808, sold, London, Sotheby's, 16 December 1999, lot 57.