Lot 18: A hanging bouquet of fruit and flowers

Jacob Rotius Dutch c. 1644-1681
A hanging bouquet of fruit and flowers
oil on canvas
30 x 25 in. 76.2 x 63.5 cm.

with Leger Galleries, London, by 1968, as 'Jan Davidsz. de Heem', from whom purchased by the present collector in 1969.

This hanging bouquet of fruit and flowers contains all the elements characteristic of still lifes by Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1606-1683/84) and his pupils: bunches of translucent grapes, a ripe pomegranate with its bright red interior revealed, and flowers in various stages of bloom. A subtle use of light and shade defines the three-dimensionality of the bouquet, expertly placed highlights on the grapes, berries and melon in deep shadow at once suggesting their forms while indicating spatial recession. As with de Heem's bouquets in Washington (National Gallery) and Dresden (Gemäldegalerie), elegant wheat stalks unite the still life elements and the whole is bound by the blue silk ribbon that appears in so many hanging bouquets.

Paintings such as Hanging bouquet of fruit and flowers belong to the somewhat murky area of the late de Heem studio peopled by artists such as Abraham Mignon and Jacob Rotius, to whom this painting is attributed. Houbraken described Rotius as a late pupil of Jan Davidsz. de Heem and he would have been between twenty-one and twenty-eight years old during de Heem's final years in Utrecht, from 1665 to 1672. Rotius' early training was almost certainly in Hoorn with his father, the portrait painter Jan Rotius, and his early twenties would have been the right age to join a successful specialized studio such as that of de Heem. A period of work in Amsterdam has also been suggested due both to the influence of Willem Kalf in Rotius' early works and his marriage to a woman from Amsterdam in 1668.

Dated works by Rotius are known from 1668 to 1680. His paintings most like those of de Heem are from the late 1660s, when he would have been in the studio together with the master's son, Cornelis, and Mignon, whose particular influence on the artist has been noted. Mignon was in de Heem's studio from around 1661 until 1669 and may have taken over the master's studio when de Heem returned to Antwerp upon the French invasion of 1672.

We would like to thank Fred Meijer of the RKD for proposing the attribution of the present painting to Jacob Rotius on the basis of photographs.