FLORIS VAN DIJCK | An uitgestald still life of pears, apples and grapes on blue-and-white porcelain bowls, glass roemers, a knife, an overturned wine-glass, apple-peel, an orange and lemons on a pewter plate, walnuts and hazelnuts, a bread-roll, a sliced apple, and cheese on a pewter plate, all on a table draped with a red damask cloth and a white lace-trimmed tablecloth

Anonymous sale, Stockholm, Bukowskis, 29 November 1995, lot 224;
Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Gentleman'), London, Sotheby's, 14 December 2000, lot 25.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Floris Claesz van Dyck. Still life of fruit in blue and white porcelain bowls on a tale draped with red damask and white lace table cloths. This painting is on a bevelled panel, which appears to be from a single piece of oak. At the uppermost edge the curve of the grain seems almost to reach the heart of a vast oak tree, with a retouching at this point. However the panel appears to have remained stable generally. There has been a recent restoration and one accidental damage can be seen under ultra violet light on the table cloth next to the central plate of fruit. The brushwork of the apples appears rather fragmented. Elsewhere there is a scattering of apparently superficial small retouches in various places, perhaps most frequently in the central left area, but minor surface touches can be seen across the centre. This report was not done under laboratory conditions
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Floris van Dijck was the most important of the early painters of still-life subjects in Haarlem in the early seventeenth century. The display still lifes that he pioneered, with their distinctive piles of cheeses, lavishly laden tables and striking combinations of red and white cloths, are instantly memorable and recognisable, and would have a profound influence on the following generation of painters such as Floris van Schooten. This panel is one of only a very small number of signed and dated examples of Van Dijck's work. Because of the rarity of other signed and dated examples, it is not easy to date the present painting precisely within the second decade of the seventeenth century, the most productive in Van Dijck's limited œuvre. The last digit of the date is unfortunately now indistinct, but has speculatively been read as a '5' for 1615. The closest parallels with securely dated pictures are to be found with a painting of 1613 preserved in the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (fig. 1).¹ This incorporates many of the objects and arrangements that are to be found in the present picture, for example the two cheeses piled on a pewter dish, the bunch of grapes, and the apples in the blue and white porcelain bowl. A similar date of execution for the present panel around the middle of the decade would thus seem quite plausible.

The most prominent part of the design is, of course, the stack of two cheeses. The top one may be a sheep's cheese from the island of Texel known as a Texelse Schapenkaas, which were famous in the seventeenth century. Its green colour comes from its method of production, including the addition of a reduction of boiled sheeps' droppings to the milk to give it a distinctive spicy flavour. The large cheese beneath it is an aged cheese known as Oude Kaas, which is still widely eaten today.

1 Inv. no. 79; see E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländischer Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, Lingen 1995, vol. II, p. 292, cat. no. 98/2.