Simon Luttichuys

Pehr Lagerbring (1733-1799), whose collection was bought in its entirety by
David Hendrik Hildebrand (1712-1791), Ericsberg;
His son David Gotthard Hendrik Hildebrand (1761-1808), who died unmarried;
His sister Agneta Sofia Hildebrand, who was married to Baron Carl Göran Bonde (1757-1840);
Thence by descent at Ericsberg until sold ("Property from the Bonde Collection, Ericsbergs Slott, Sweden"), London, Sotheby's, 5 July 2006, lot 34, where purchased by the present owner.

Stockholm, National Museum, Holländska Mästare I Svensk Ägo (Dutch Masters in Swedish Collections), 3 March - 30 April 1967, no. 93;
Eldsberga, Kunsthandel J. Oppenheimer, Dutch Masters, February 1971, no. 30.

O. Granberg, Catalogue raisonné de tableaux anciens inconnus jusqu'ici dans les collections privées de la Suède, Stockholm 1886;
A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, vol. II, Vienna/Leipzig 1910, p. 73;
O. Granberg, Inventaire général des trésors d'art... en Suède, vol. 3, Stockholm 1913, no. 63, reproduced plate 10;
A.P.A. Vorenkamp, Bijdrage tot de gesciedenis van het Hollandsche Stilleven in de zeventiende eeuw, dissertation, Amsterdam 1933, p. 45;
C. Nordenfalk, ed., B. Wenneberg, Holländska Mästare I Svensk Ägo, exhibition catalogue, Stockholm 1967, p. 79, no. 93;
I. Bergstrom, "Notes on the Boundaries of Vanitas significance," in Ijdelheid der Ijdelheden. Hollandse Vanitas- voorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exhibition catalogue, Leiden 1970, reproduced fig. 5;
Dutch Masters, exhibition catalogue, Eldsberga 1971, p. 16, cat. no. 30, reproduced; 
N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message as intimated by the painters of the 'Monochrome Banketje', Schiedamn 1980, vol. 1, pp. 189-90, reproduced fig. 257, vol. 2, pp. 89-90, no. 443;
A. Veca, Vanitas. Il simbolismo del tempo, exhibition catalogue, Bergamo 1981, p. 37, reproduced fig. 27;
B. Ebert, Simon und Isaack Luttichuys, Berlin/Munich 2009, pp. 396-7, cat. no. Sim. A58, reproduced plate 77.

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 work on canvas in unlined. The tacking edges have been reinforced but it is well stretched with only a faint hint of a stretcher mark around the edges. The painting has been recently cleaned and is in lovely condition. There are no structural damages and barely any retouches. The condition is remarkable and the painting should be hung as is.
"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."

Though later on in the 1650s Luttichuys painted larger and grander "pronk" still lifes, few of them, if any, reach the purity of light, tone and color of this remarkable painting. Its impact is helped in no small degree by the absence of the dark background that governs almost all of his other still lifes; instead a wide shaft of light illuminates the back stone wall and the damaged stone column, lending a crucial context and sense of depth to the arrangement of objects. It is a key yet atypical work within Luttichuys' oeuvre, seeming to support the supposition made by Laurens Bol and others that the artist, who was born in London in 1610 of Dutch stock, must have spent some part of his early career in the sphere of influence of Jan Jansz. den Uyl and Jan Jansz. Treck in Amsterdam. It is strongly reminiscent of the work of both painters, in its restricted palette based on numerous subtle variations of a limited number of colors, and the use of a central motif of a pewter tankard. It is unexpected, unlike almost anything else we know of Luttichuys. It shows an artist supremely confident in his craft, one able to achieve a dizzying sense of realism with what is, in fact, a surprisingly broad painterly technique, an artist of immense versatility and vision who refuses to consign himself to the laborious replication of a single theme or style.

No other work in Luttichuys' oeuvre manifests the influence of den Uyl so strongly as this. A comparison with Den Uyl's Still Life with a Jug and an Overturned Tazza in an English private collection¹ is particularly helpful in elucidating this point (fig. 1); Luttichuys has clearly borrowed the color scheme, compositional format (though in reverse) and even such motifs as the quarter-filled glass of beer and the jug itself, which seems identical in every detail to den Uyl's.

Complicating this matter, though, is the fact that the present painting was executed some 9-10 years after den Uyl's death and, in between his death and the time this picture was executed, Luttichuys produced his first still lifes in a very different style, in the manner of Jan Lievens and the Leiden school.² Complicating it further is Ebert's recent documentary discovery that Luttichuys was still in London in 1639, the year before den Uyl's untimely death.³

Whether Luttichuys did travel to Amsterdam in the 1630s and meet den Uyl (even though he is first documented there in 1646) must remain open to debate. More likely is that he absorbed den Uyl's lessons simply through exposure to his paintings which he must have seen in Amsterdam collections during the late 1640s; this painting, so obviously in den Uyl's style, would be proof therefore that the taste and demand for such pictures remained strong, even as late as 1649, a demand that Luttichuys would have been more than happy to supply. Another possible theory is that Luttichuys simply absorbed den Uyl's lessons through Treck who continued to paint still lifes in the manner of his brother-in-law in Amsterdam well into the 1650s and, what is more, seems to have inherited his props. Indeed Luttichuys declared in 1661 that he overpainted and improved ("overschildert en vermeerdert") a still life by Treck.⁴ Few of Treck's still lifes, however, pay homage to those of den Uyl so manifestly as this.

Luttichuys was born in London in 1610. There he painted portraits in a somewhat stiff English style. His portrait of Thomas Morton, completed in 1638 and verified by means of the entry in the account book of St. John's College, not only places him still in England at that date but shows his skill level to be far short of anything normally associated with him and argues for his having received his training only in England.⁵ Whether he subsequently spent time in England with a Dutch still life painter, or he continued his education in the Netherlands, is not known, but his first still life arrangement is dated 1644. He quickly turned to favor banquet and "splendour" still lifes which, as Ebert has argued, were to be a strong influence on the young Willem Kalf who, it is said (like Luttichuys did of a Treck), finished one his pictures. Despite spending the best part of his career in the Netherlands his fame continued in England and in 1658 the English writer, William Sanderson, praised him using a quaint early term for still lifes, and anglicizing the artist's name:

"And in dead-standing things, Little House, a Dutchman."

1.  Sold, New York, Sotheby's, 14 January 1988, lot 41.
2.  See Ebert, under Literature, nos. Sim.A1 – Sim.A7.
3.  Ibid., p. 313.
4. A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, The Hague 1915-22, vol. IV, p. 1292.
5.  Ibid., pp. 409-10, nos. Sim. A71 and Sim. A72, reproduced figs. 18 and 19.