Lot 131: JACOB VAN HULSDONCK

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN ANTWERP 1582 - 1647 STILL LIFE OF PLUMS ON A PLATE, WITH CHERRIES ON THE LEDGE BESIDE oil on panel 27.2 by 39 cm.; 10 3/4 by 15 3/8 in.

E. Greindl, Les peintres Flamands de Nature Morte au XVIIe siècle, Brussels 1960, p. 365, no. 51.

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 21 March 1973, lot 64 (as Jacob van Hulsdonck) for £8,000 to Hallsborough; With the Hallsborough Gallery, London; Private Collection, The Netherlands; Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Hulsdonck clearly made a speciality of small scale still lifes such as this on both copper and panel, depicting simple plates or bowls of peaches and plums upon plain wooden table tops. A good signed example on copper and of similar size (28.8 by 35 cm.) was sold, for example, London, Christie's, 9 December 1988, lot 105 and another monogrammed panel was offered London, Christie's, 8 December 2005, lot 14. We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie for observing that the same dish also forms part of a larger composition by Hulsdonck (52 by 75 cm.) formerly in the Spoelberch collection and now in the Museum in Louvain. He also notes another version formerly with Salomon Lilian in Amsterdam. Other variants have also been ascribed to the Frankfurt-born painter Isaac Soreau, who may have worked alongside Hulsdonck in Antwerp and frequently borrowed his designs.