Jan van Huysum

Captain Arthur Heywood Lonsdale, Shavington, Shropshire;
With A. Tooth & Sons, London;
Purchased from the above by the father-in-law of the present owner 3 April 1935;
Thence by descent.

Amsterdam, Goudstikker Galleries, Het Stilleven, 18 February -26 March 1933, cat. no. 163.

Catalogus der Tentoonstelling "Het Stilleven", Goudstikker Galleries, 1933, unpaginated, cat. no. 163, reproduced plate no. 46;
M.H. Grant, Jan Van Huysum, 1682-1749, Leigh-on-Sea 1954, p. 32, cat. no. 224.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on canvas, which has been lined probably about forty or fifty years ago when it was apparently simply relined over an older existing lining, which it clearly did not penetrate sufficiently to hold the paint securely. So there are a few tiny loose places and the overall surface is not evenly stretched. A good lining would resolve this and secure the paint. The fairly roughly applied varnish is probably synthetic and from the same sixties seventies period. This dims the fine detail and richness of the colour. Various generalised surface retouchings in the upper background and the edges can be seen faintly under ultra violet light with a few other minor small touches. The pale petals of the white rose and the lighter tulip show the crests of the canvas weave, with other moments of occasional thinness, but elsewhere the minute detail of the light across the finest veins in the leaves is beautifully intact, as are the legs of the insects, the well preserved glazing in the darker flowers and the crisp signature below. Beneath its unsatisfactory sixties treatment the under lying painting is in good condition overall. This report was not done under laboratory conditions. .
"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."

Van Huysum most probably painted this charming still life early in his career. The dark neutral background and plain grey marble ledge, together with the compact bouquet and sharply spotlit central blooms within it all point to a likely date in the second decade of the eighteenth century. A broadly similar arrangement can be found, for example, in his Flowers in a glass vase of around 1716, today in the Museum der Bildenden Kunst in Leipzig¹. The design in the works of this period is still carefully controlled in S-shaped curves around a compact central group, but this would evolve around 1720 or so to the more colourful and brightly lit works and landscape backgrounds of his mature career. Yet the impact these works made on Van Huysum's contemporaries, even at this early date, is attested to by the Dutch painter Jan van Gool, who wrote that: 'The first I ever saw by him [Jan van Huysum] was sent to me in the year 1716 by Mr. Galer, a great Art Lover of that period. I readily admit that I gazed at it in astonishment, for I had never seen the equal of this piece, either in the treatment of paint, or the arrangement of the Flowers'.

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer  and Dr. Sam Segal for both independently endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs. Dr. Segal has kindly suggested a possible date of execution around 1715-16 for this work.

 

1. Reproduced in the exhibition catalogue, The Temptations of Flora. Jan van Huysum 1682-1749, Zwolle, Delft and Houston 2007, p. 172, fig. F10.3.