Lot 30: Jacob van Hulsdonck (Antwerp 1582-1647)

Jacob van Hulsdonck (Antwerp 1582-1647)
A basket of grapes with peaches, a butterfly, a fly and a beetle on a table
signed 'JVHULSDONCK.FE' (lower left)
oil on panel
19 x 24¾ in. (48.5 x 63 cm.)

By descent in the Lawes-Wittenwrong family, who settled at Rothamsted from Ghent in 1611.
Lady Lawes; Sotheby's, London, 8 July 1981, lot 111.
with Richard Green, London, 1982.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 11 April 1990, lot 25 (£236,500).
Acquired in 1990 or shortly afterward by the present owner.

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Hulsdonck was born in Antwerp but soon moved to Middleburg where Ambrosius Bosschaert had established an influential school of still life painting at the turn of the seventeenth century. Huldsdonck's oeuvre however displays more similarities with the works of Osias Beert, another leading still life painter who was also based in Middleburg.
Like his close contemporary Isaac Soreau, Hulsdonck's paintings are hardly ever dated and therefore it is difficult to create a chronology of his career. Much like Soreau's painting (see lot 22), the present composition owes a debt to Caravaggio whose Basket of flowers, of circa 1595-1601, for Cardinal Federico Borromeo in Rome was pivotal to the development of the still life genre in both Southern and Northern Europe.

We are grateful to Fred Meijer, of the RKD in The Hague, for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs (private communication, 10 December 2010).