Lot 378: Ernst Stuven (Hamburg 1660 - 1712 Rotterdam) Still

Ernst Stuven (Hamburg 1660 - 1712 Rotterdam) Still life with pomegranates, peaches, apples, and grapes in a basket, on a stone balustrade covered with a velvet cloth, signed at lower left E. Stuvens, oil on canvas, 49 x 41 cm, framed, (Wo) Ernst Stuven studied with Georg Hainz and after moving to the Netherlands became one of the most successful still-life painters of the late 16th century in Amsterdam. Hermann van der Mijn and Willem Grasdorp numbered among his students. His elegantly composed and delicately executed still lifes of flowers and fruit mark the climax of this genre in the late 16th century. However, Houbraken, in his "Grote Schouburg" of 1719, mentions another aspect of the artist's personality: he was supposed to have been a drunkard and bon vivant that was often involved in rows - his student Grasdorp, who later became a successful painter, is said to have been one of his victims (Houbraken, vol. III, pp. 371, 381) Literature: comp. Alfred von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon, Vienna 1910, vol. II, p. 672; Arnold Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen, vol. III, Amsterdam 1719; Thieme-Becker, vol. XXXII, p. 263.