Lot 27: Carnations, tulips and other flowers in a glass vase with peaches, grapes, and plums in a basket on a ledge with cherries, a butterfly and a beetle

Isaac Soreau (active Hanau 1620-1638)
Carnations, tulips and other flowers in a glass vase with peaches, grapes, and plums in a basket on a ledge with cherries, a butterfly and a beetle
oil on panel, stamped on the reverse with the coat-of-arms of the city of Antwerp and the maker's mark of Guilliam Gabron (active Antwerp 1609-1662)
19½ x 25¼ in. (49.5 x 64cm.)

Amsterdam, Gallery de Boer, De Helsche en de Fluweelen Brueghel , 1934, no. 331.
Ghent, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Fleurs et jardins dans l'art flamand , 1960, no. 140, as 'attributed to Jan Soreau'.

L.W. sale, Fiévez, Brussels, 18 December 1928, lot 13, as 'Ambrosius Breughel', whence acquired by Stuyck (see below).
Fernand Stuyck collection, Antwerp; his sale, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 7 December 1960, lot 106, where presumably unsold or purchased by the family.
Yolande Stuyck, Antwerp; Sotheby's, London, 8 July 1981, lot 40.
Acquired shortly afterwards by the present owner.

Property from a European Private Collection (lots 23 and 27)


This is one of Soreau's most accomplished still lifes, closely comparable with a picture sold at Christie's, London, 16 December, 1998, lot 8 (later with Richard Green). Like that picture, the present panel bears an Antwerp brand, lending further credence to the generally held assumption that the artist spent some time in Antwerp in the 1630s in the vicinity of Jacob van Hulsdonck, perhaps even working in his studio. As shown by this example, the similarities between the two artists' work are striking. The meticulous attention to detail and arrangement of the elements - in this case a flower vase and fruit basket - are common features in both their output. Since Soreau was not a member of the Antwerp guild and therefore unable to sell paintings under his own name in Antwerp, Fred Meijer has suggested that, hypothetically at least, Soreau could have sold his own works as by Hulsdonck (see F. Meijer, The Collection of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Paintings bequeathed by Daisy Linda Ward to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford , Zwolle, 2003, p. 281). This would also explain the paucity of signed works by the German born artist, indeed there are no extant signed pictures between 1626 and 1638.