Believed to have been in the family of the current owner for the past five generations.
The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's:
Abraham Mignon. A hanging Garland with flowers and insects. Signed at lower left, A. Mignon. Fe.
This painting is on a firm flat oak panel with wide bevelling all round. The panel itself has remained perfectly unmoved, with no trace of instability or raised paint, past or present.
The virtually untouched condition of this painting is extraordinarily rare. Having remained apparently undisturbed in the same collection over centuries, the most minute detail is still immaculately exact and unworn, (as for instance the minuscule spider's web in the centre at the top) and the glittering precision of the light on the blue silk ribbons holding the garland not to mention the crests of the nails it is hung upon or the brilliant minutiae of the flowers themselves, let alone the legs of the insects.
This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
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Hitherto unknown, this abundantly dense festoon, an arrangement of both wild and cultivated flowers mostly at the peak of their bloom, hangs from a shimmering blue ribbon at each end. The centre of the swag consists of a white and a full pink rose, surrounded by poppies, a tulip, with an anemone to the right and hibiscuses to the left. Wild fruit and plants, such as raspberries, blueberries and wheat sheaves, soften the garland. Although asymmetrically displayed, an impression of harmony is given. Insects, ever present in Mignon's paintings, include a caterpillar, moth and bee. Mignon's sophisticated use of light and colour give these flowers, fruit and insects a sculptural and iridescent quality, creating a powerful contrast with the dark monochrome of the background.
Only a few still lifes by Mignon of this type exist. The present work has closest affinities to that in the Statens Museum, Copenhagen, possessing the same density of composition and repeating the central grouping of two roses and a tulip.1 Mignon never dated his paintings so it is very difficult to establish a chronology for his work; however, Fred Meijer, to whom we are grateful, dates this hanging garland to circa 1665–7, a time when Mignon's handling is still very close to that of his master Jan Davidsz. de Heem.
We are also grateful to Magdalena Kraemer-Noble, who has studied the work at first-hand and believes it to be an excellent example of Mignon's work, as well as one of the earliest of his paintings. Dr Kraemer-Noble will include the work in a supplement to her catalogue raisonné on Mignon.
1. Inv. no. KMS315. M. Kraemer-Noble, Abraham Mignon, Peterberg 2007, pp. 64–65, cat. no. 10, reproduced.
