Jan van Kessel

In the collection of the Counts of Holstein-Holsteinborg, Holsteinborg Castle, Denmark, since 1710;

By direct descent to Erik Frederik Adolf Joachim (1945–1965), Count of Holstein-Holsteinborg;

Thence by family descent until anonymously sold (‘The Property of a Nobleman’), London, Christie’s, 15 April 1983, lot 86, for £48,000;

Where acquired for the Grasset Collection.

Anon., Hollandske og Flamske Stilleben fra 1600, exh. cat., Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen, 1965, p. 32, no. 55;

M.L. Hairs, The Flemish Flower Painters in the XVIIth Century, Brussels 1985, p. 484;

K. Ertz and C. Nitze-Ertz, Die Maler Jan van Kessel. Jan van Kessel der Ältere 1626–1679, Jan van Kessel der Jüngere 1654–1708, Jan van Kessel der 'Andere' ca. 1620 – ca. 1621, Lingen 2012, p. 314, no. 528, reproduced.

Copenhagen, Kunstforeningen, Hollandske og flamske stilleben fra 1600 – tallet i dansk eje, 30 January – 28 February 1965, no. 55.

Recorded as a blomschilder (flower painter) in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1644, Jan van Kessel was a prolific and versatile artist. Although perhaps best known then as now for his remarkable insect studies he was also a highly accomplished painter of flowers in a variety of formats. His small, colourful and highly detailed cabinet pieces such as this are undoubtedly among his most attractive works in this vein. This canvas is a relatively late work by Van Kessel and is dated by Dr Fred G. Meijer to the 1660s. As he observes, the composition is heavily indebted to that of an earlier picture, probably painted in the first half of the 1650s by a contemporary of Van Kessel, the Antwerp flower painter Jan Philipsz. Van Thielen (1618–1667), in which the majority of the principal blooms recur.¹ Such borrowings were entirely typical of the working method of Jan van Kessel, who frequently adapted compositions or motifs by other painters.

It is rare to be able to trace the history of a still-life painting of this date back to within fifty years of its creation, but this is the case with the present canvas, whose provenance, according to the 1983 sale catalogue, is recorded as far back as 1710 in the collections of the Counts of Holstein-Holsteinborg in Holsteinborg castle, by whom it was exhibited for the first time only in 1965.

¹ Panel, 52 x 37.5 cm. Exhibited Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, and Toledo Museum of Art, The Age of Rubens, 1993–94, no. 104.