Lot 292: CLARA PEETERS

CLARA PEETERS ANTWERP 1584 - 1657 A STILL LIFE WITH FISH IN A CERAMIC COLLANDER, OYSTERS, LANGOUSTINES, MACKEREL AND A CAT ON THE LEDGE BENEATH signed lower left: CLARA.P. oil on panel 13 3/8 by 18 7/8 in.; 34 by 48 cm.

P. Hibbs Decoteau, Clara Peeters, Lingen 1992, p. 181, reproduced p. 39, fig. 26 (as location unknown).

H.B. Leipzig;
His sale, Berlin, Hecht, 27 February 1928, lot 118;
D.A. Hoogendijk, Amsterdam, 1932;
Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 6 May 1996, lot 9, for £52,801;
Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Private Collector'), London, Sotheby's, 24 April 2008, lot 31;
There purchased by the present owner.

This is one of three paintings by the artist depicting fish in ceramic colanders, all of which are of broadly the same dimensions. Of the other two, one is in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., and the other is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Antwerp.(1) All three paintings are dated by Hibbs Decoteau to the 1620s. Of the three, the Washington painting is considered the earliest due to its similarites with Peeters' works of 1611-12, sharing a similarly high viewpoint to her paintings depicting various types of food of 1612 such as the Herring, Cherries and Artichoke.(2) The present work and the Antwerp painting share more in common with her work of the 1630s, being taken from a lower viewpoint, and compressing the objects so that they overlap.

Little is known of Peeters' training due to a scarcity of documentary evidence. Her earliest dated work is from 1608 and the last record of her is from 1657. It is surprising perhaps, given her evident mastery of the genre of still life painting, that her name does not feature in the records of the Antwerp guild, which had already started to admit women by 1602.

1. See Hibbs Decoteau, under Literature, pp. 128-9, fig. 25, & pp. 130-1, fig. 27, respectively.
2. ibid, p. 180, fig. 17, reproduced pp. 30-31.