Still Life With An Overturned Basket – 17th Century Dutch School

Oil on panel. Dutch school of the 17th century.
In a bare decor consisting of a gray stone entablature and a wall in similar tones, the contents of a basket of fruit are spread out before our eyes. Quinces, peaches, apricots, cherries and grapes are all delicacies that the spectator can only appreciate with their eyes. Although it is difficult to definitively attribute our composition to a particular painter, we can find similarities with the manner of some famous Dutch painters of the Golden Age. Thus we find some compositions with inverted elements and a disordered appearance in the corpus of the Antwerp artist Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606 – 1684) or in his son Cornelis (1631 – 1695). These are often enriched with luxurious pieces of tableware and goldwork. The ornamental sobriety of our work makes us think of the Dutch Balthasar van der Ast (1593 – 1657), or of his nephews Ambrosius II (1609 – 1645) and Johannes Bosschaert (c. 1607 – 1628), who did not hesitate to create movement in subjects deemed static by the effect of leaning objects or twirling insects. In this regard, the manner used by our painter to mount the volumes of the fruits presents a real proximity to the art of the latter.
This pictorial genre is above all a vanity recalling the ephemeral aspect of all life and its fragility. Thus, the picked fruits destined to decompose illustrate the first point and the frail butterfly evokes the second.

We have chosen to present this painting to you in a Dutch frame with a reversed profile in blackened wood.
Dimensions: 33.5 x 41 cm – 49 x 57 cm with the frame

Bibliography:
- GRIMM, Claus, Still lifes, Herscher, 1992 GREINDL, Edith, Flemish still life painters in the 17th century, Michel Lefebvre, 1983
- BERGSTROM, Ingvar, HEDSTROM, Christina, Dutch still life paintings in the seventeenth century, Gothenburg, 1947
- VAN DER WILLIGEN, A, MEIGER, Fred G, A dictionary of Dutch and Flemish still life painters working in oils 1525 – 1725, Primavera Press, 2003
- MEIJER, Fred G, Dutch and Flemish still-life paintings, collection of the Ashmolean Museum Oxford, Waanders BV, 2005