JAN JANSZ. VAN DE VELDE | Still life with oysters and smoking supplies

Possibly Henrik Nordmark (1895–1975), Djursholm, Sweden (?his grey wax seal on the reverse);

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby’s, 13 July 1977, lot 66, for £13,500, where acquired by Baron van Dedem.

N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message as intimated by the painters of the `Monochrome Banketje', Schiedam 1980, vol. 2, p. 131, no. 677, reproduced (as private collection, Zeist: this is where Willem van Dedem then lived); P.C. Sutton, Dutch & Flemish Paintings, The Collection of Willem Baron van Dedem, London 2002, pp. 258–59, cat. no. 56, reproduced p. 259.

The oak panel is completely flat, uncradled, and bevelled along all four edges. There is a fair amount of retouching throughout the background, the result of both the paint having been applied very thinly by the artist in this area, and some loss along the horizontal grain of the wood. The still life itself, which was painted much more thickly, has survived well. There are some retouchings along the grain, such as in the lower part of the white tablecloth, and the red ceramic dish has been largely gone over. The varnish is opaque and could be replaced.
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This little painting incorporates the artist’s two favourite themes: the so-called breakfast piece featuring gleaming oysters and the leavings of a small loaf of bread, olives on a pewter plate, and wine in a glass roemer; and that of the painting of smoking requisites. Van de Velde usually painted his still lifes in an upright format, and usually included fewer items in his mostly modest and more restrained compositions. Notwithstanding the small scale of this panel, it is one of Van de Velde’s most complicated compositions. The full table top features a broken clay brazier atop a closed tric-trac gaming box, a white and blue earthenware bottle on its side, glassware, a pewter saltcellar, a blue and white Wan-li Kraak porcelain bowl, and a cluttering of pewter dishes, food, pipes and tobacco. Several of these motifs are identifiable in other paintings by Van de Velde, particularly the broken brazier, the saltcellar and the Wan-li bowl. The upturned blue and white earthenware bottle appears at exactly the same angle, with it’s open pewter cap, in two other paintings: one panel dated 1644 that was sold in these Rooms, 9 July 2008, lot 59, and again in a panel in the collection of the Hearst State Monument, San Simeon, California.¹ Whether or not this is exactly the same model as that in the present panel remains a mystery as the coat-of-arms on this pitcher is too small to be identifiable. Peter C. Sutton (see Literature) identifies this pitcher as a wapenkruik, a type of arboreal pitcher that was manufactured in the German Rhineland on order from the city of Amsterdam. A wapenkruik with a legible seal of the City of Amsterdam appears in a painting by Jan van de Velde III in the Musuem of Fine Arts, Budapest.²

Jan Jansz van de Velde was the grandson of a great calligrapher of the same name, the signatures on his paintings often include elegant flourishes, perhaps in acknowledgement of his grandfather’s speciality.

 

1 RKD no. 231588. 

2 Inventory no. 190.