Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts

With Hanover Gallery, London, by 1950;
With F. Frank, London, by 1951;
Marcus, Paris, before 1964;
Probably with Duits Gallery, London;
Oscar and Maria Salzer, Los Angeles;
By whom given to the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science,1983 (Acc. FMM 82.31).

Lawrence, KS, Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, The Salzer Collection, Trompe L'Oeil and Still Life Paintings, A Loan Exhibition, 4 October - 1 November 1964, cat. no. 20, reproduced on the catalogue cover;
Charlotte, NC, The Mint Museum of Art, The Salzer Collection, Trompe-L'Oeil and Still Life Paintings,  A Loan Exhibition, 14 February - 7 March 1965, cat. no. 20;
Los Angeles, Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California; Seattle, WA, Seattle Art Museum; Honolulu, HI, Honolulu Academy of Art; Santa Barbara, CA, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Reality and Deception, 16 October 1974 – 20 April 1975, cat. no. 30, reproduced and on catalogue cover;
Columbus, OH, Columbus Museum of Art; West Palm Beach, FL, Norton Gallery of Art,  More Than Meets the Eye: The Art of Trompe l'Oeil, 7 December 1985 – 27 April 1986, cat. no. 2, reproduced pp. 10 and 50;
Dartmouth, NH, Hood Museum of Art; Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art; Houston, TX, Museum of Fine Arts; Atlanta, GA, High Museum of Art, Age of the Marvelous, 21 September 1991 - 3 January 1993, cat. no. 197, reproduced p. 431;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Cleveland, OH, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands, 1550-1720, 19 June 1999 - 9 January 2000, cat. no. 56;
Nagoya, Nagoya City Art Museum; Bunkamura, The Bunkamura Museum of Art; Hyogo, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Visual Deception, 11 April 2009 - 3 November 2009, cat. no. 28, reproduced pp. 66 and 67.

G. Marlier, "Het stilleven in de Vlaamse schilderkunst der XVIe eeuw," in Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten te Antwerpen, 1941, p. 103;
P. Gammelbo, "Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts og Franciscus Gijsbrechts," in Kunstmuseets Arsskrift 39-42 (1952-55), p. 147, no. 11, reproduced;
G. Marlier, "C.N. Gysbrechts, l'illusioniste," in Connaissance des Arts, no. 145, March 1964, p. 103, reproduced;
A.P. de Mirimonde, "Les peintres de trompe l'oeil et de natures morte aux XVIIe siècle, et les fujets de musique," in Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen," 1971, p. 247, reproduced pl. 27;
M. Battersby, Trompe l'oeil: The Eye Deceived, 1974, p. 108, reproduced;
D. Folga-Januzewska, "Trompe l'oeil de C.N. Gijsbrechts dans les collections du Musée National de Varsovie," in Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie 22, 1981, pp. 57-61;
Portraits of Objects, Oscar and Maria Salzer Collection of Still Life and Trompe-L'Oeil Paintings, Fresno 1984, cat. no. 21, reproduced in color on the cover;
S.B. Sherrill, "Current and Coming," in Antiques Magazine, December 1985, reproduced;
P.C. Sutton, The Age of Rubens, exhibition catalogue, Boston 1993, p. 551, reproduced p. 554, fig. 1;
M. Braun, Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts und Fransiscus Gijsbrechts, (Diss.), Berlin 1994, p. 95-96, cat. no. 1.1.16;
G. Apgar, S. O'L. Higgins, C. Striegel, The Newspaper in Art, Spokane 1996, p. 10, reproduced fig. 14;
A. Chong and W. Kloek, Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands, 1550-1720, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam and Cleveland 1999, pp. 231-233, cat. no. 56, reproduced pp. 58 (detail) and 232;
O. Koester, Illusions:  Gijsbrechts, Royal Master of Deception, exhibition catalogue Copenhagen, 1999, p. 152, reproduced.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has been fairly recently restored, yet not effectively. The canvas has a lining which is stabilizing the paint layer. The painting is thickly varnished and although there is some retouching beneath this varnish, it would be worth cleaning the picture to reveal the more textured paint layer. The painting has an opaque varnish which makes it hard to see retouches under ultraviolet light. However, scattered retouches are visible with the naked eye in the background. The picture appears to have been slightly under-cleaned. There is a loss in the upper center letter at approximately 12 o'clock and this picture will respond well to a more careful cleaning and retouching to address the most obvious issues. There is some restoration beneath the old varnish however almost all of it has not been applied in the best interests of the picture.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

During the early 1650s in the Netherlands and other parts of northern Europe, trompe l'oeil paintings were sought after by collectors and princely patrons who admired the skill and sophistication of these "praiseworthy deceptions".¹  As the audience for them grew, a number of different variants evolved, including cut-outs, letter boards and open or closed cupboards, such as the present work.   

Here we see a glass-windowed cupboard, its door ajar.  Tucked behind a horizontal metal bar and into the wooden frame are various written and printed documents and writing implements, while dimly visible within are stacks of coins, eye glasses, sticks of sealing wax and a wooden box.  On the door itself, at the very center of the composition, is a small sheaf of prints, stitched together in the upper margins.  The etching on top -- the only one visible to the viewer -- is a small head of a man in profile based on a print by Jan Lievens,² but Gijsbrechts has added his own signature underneath and the date 1665.  To the left is a 1657 almanac from Liège, which partly obscures a newspaper with the headline "Victor...".  This latter has been identified as referring to the English victory over the Dutch in  the Battle of Lowestoft , June 1665.³  The other elements of the still life are more generic in nature and have not been linked to any known pamphlets or books.

Gijsbrechts painted very few cupboard still lifes.  He was undoubtedly inspired by Hoogstraaten, who began painting similar wall cupboards with glass windows in the early 1650s.  The present work and a painting of a closed cupboard in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, both dated 1665, are the earliest known.  Another closely related picture, dated 1666 was with Noortman Master Paintings, Maastricht.⁴  Unlike the later works that Gijsbrechts painted while in the service of the Danish King Frederick III, now in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, which include small bronzes and other elements familiar to curiosity cabinets, these three works all feature more mundane elements.  It is Gijsbrechts' masterful arrangement of these ordinary  materials that attracts and excites us.  Using the small etching as an anchor, he fans out the letters and pamphlets around it, curling the edges of the sheets and tilting them just out of the vertical plane so that they catch the light and our eye.  Completing the circle at the bottom is a quill pen, whose shadow falls on the cabinet door, which appears to have just swung open. 

1.  C. Brusati in Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands, 1550-1720, p. 59, see Literature.
2.  Bust of a Man with Thick Lips (Holl. 88).
3.  A. Chong and W. Kloek,in Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands, 1550-1720, p. 231, see Literature.
4.  See O. Koester, The Eye Deceived:  Painted Illusions by Cornelius Gijsbrechts, exhibition catalogue, The Hague 2005, pp. 52-53, cat. 12, reproduced.