Willem Van Aelst

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer for endorsing the attribution to Willem van Aelst, based on digital photographs. This painting is number 191970 in the online database of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (as Willem van Aelst or Anonymous Dutch, with Dr. Meijer's assertation that the there is no reason to doubt the authorship of van Aelst).

Provenance:
Private Collection, England
Sold: Christie's, London, July 11, 1980, Lot 36 (as Peaches, Figs, and Blackberries with a Parrot on a Draped Marble Table, and as signed and dated 1651)
Leonard & David Koetser Gallery, Geneva, 1980 (as signed and dated 1651)
Acquired from the above by the present owners, 1981

Exhibited:
University Park, Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania State University Museum of Art, Netherlandish Art, 17th Century, January 8 - March 22, 1985
Loaned to Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, August 4 - November 19, 1993

Literature:
Tanya Paul, "Beschildert met een Glans" : Willem van Aelst and artistic self-consciousness in seventeenth-century Dutch still life painting, PhD dissertation, University of Virginia, 2008, n. 131, p. 296, Section B, no. 131 (as "paintings with debatable attributions that I have not been able to confirm as the work of van Aelst, but which I feel may be the work of van Aelst.")

Lot note:
The carefully composed still life of peaches, figs, and blackberries, accompanied by a parrot, is a typical and highly finished work by Willem van Aelst, an important advocate of the pronkstilleven (ornate or sumptuous still life) genre. The various textures, reflections of light, and gradations of color seen in Van Aelst’s paintings are what made him a highly sought-after artist among elite patrons. Van Aelst was brought up and trained in Delft, probably by his uncle Evert van Aelst (1602-57). A precocious talent, he entered the painters guild in 1643 at the early age of 16. His peripatetic youth next took him to France, where he remained from 1645 to 1649, and from 1649 until 1654, he worked in Florence as court painter for the Medici family, with his two primary patrons being Cardinal Giovan Carlo and Cardinal Leopoldo. Van Aelst developed his fruit still life compositions while in the employ of the Medici family, and it would have been during this time that the present painting was executed. Its rich, luxurious colors and opulent, decorative details would have appealed to his courtly audience. In Italy, the artist also met and worked closely with Otto Marseus van Schrieck, with whom he returned to Delft in 1656 (he had previously been in Venice from 1654-1656, after having to flee arrest in Florence), before settling in Amsterdam the following year. He became the teacher of several notable still-life painters, including Rachel Ruysch and Maria van Oosterwijk, and was held in great esteem both during and after his lifetime. Samuel van Hoogstraaten, a contemporary, wrote of him, "[He] so excelled at art, and copied so well from life, that his painted works appeared not to be a picture, but life itself."