Cornelis Jacobsz. Delff

Jan Poplawski, Warsaw, by 1939;

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 7 December 1988, lot 117;

Where acquired by The Weiss Gallery, London;

From whom acquired by the previous owner.

M. Walicki, in Malarze martwej natury: katalog wystawy, M. Walicki (ed.), exh. cat., Warsaw 1939, p. 28, no. 27, reproduced pl. 15;

J.G. van Gelder, Ashmolean Museum. Catalogue of the Collection of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Pictures Bequeathed by Daisy Linda Ward, Oxford 1950, p. 73, under no. 24;

S.A. Sullivan, The Dutch Gamepiece, Totowa 1984, pp. 11 and 24, reproduced fig. 10.

Warsaw, Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, Malarze martwej natury: katalog wystawy, 1939, no. 27.

Signed and dated 1597, this sophisticated composition painted on an ambitious scale is a rare early work by Cornelis Jacobsz. Delff. Following the death of Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beauckelaer, Cornelis Jacobsz Delff became one of the most celebrated exponents of the new genre of still-life painting and one of its earliest practitioners in the Netherlands. Alongside his contemporary Cornelis van Haarlem, he specialised in the depiction of market and kitchen scenes that focus on rich displays of food and utensils. No longer relegated to minor positions, these still-life objects were given a monumental treatment and placed in the foreground of his compositions. The new emphasis that figures like Delff placed on the depiction of everyday objects within the painting was a major step in the evolution of the independent still-life genre in later centuries.

Here, the artist depicts a bountiful table, laden with fish, game, fowl, kitchen ware, a wicker basket with grapes, apples and other fruit, surrounded by figures involved in the production of a meal. To the left, a poulterer is shown selling a rooster to a woman dressed in black, possibly the matron of the household; directly opposite, stands a young cook, preparing a chicken for roasting; and in the background is another cook seen placing a cauldron over a hearth.

The foreground figures were probably executed by a different hand, a Dutch mannerist painter working in the style of Pieter Aertsen and his son Pieter Pietersz the Elder. While this artist's identification remains elusive, the letter 'P', elegantly inscribed on the blade of the knife lower left, presents an alluring clue to their identity.

A work of similar dimensions, also depicting a kitchen interior, is in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond,¹ dated by Scott A. Sullivan to the first decade of the seventeenth century.²

Dr. Fred Meijer, to whom we are grateful for sharing his thoughts from digital images, has proposed an alternative anonymous attribution for this work and has suggested that there are probably two as-yet-unidentified artists involved, one for the figures and one for the still-life elements. 

¹ Inv. no. 35.2.1; oil on canvas; 114.3 x 190.5 cm.; https://vmfa.museum/piction/6027262-8007472/

² Sullivan 1984, p. 11.