Lot 231: *JAN JANSZ. DEN UYL (1595-1640)

signed with the artist's device of an owl on the center of the tazza oil on panel Jan Jansz. den Uyl was a native of Utrecht who worked for most of his career in Amsterdam where he was a contemporary of Pieter Claesz. and Willem Heda. He established a succesful studio in Amsterdam where he employed Jan Jansz. Treck as a pupil and later married his sister, Geertien Jansd. Treck in 1619. Den Uyl's still lifes were highly regarded by collectors in his own lifetime and his work was greatly admired by Sir Peter Paul Rubens who owned three of his paintings (see, J. M. Muller, The Artist as Collector, 1989, p.143). Den Uyl often signed his work with the discreet device of an owl (`uyl' is Dutch for owl). A variant of the present work, but with differences in the arrangement of the bread, was sold at Sotheby's, New York, January 11, 1996, lot 101 ($125,000). The same Tazza, placed in a similar precarious position, appears in den Uyl's work of 1628 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (see, E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, 1995, pp. 993 and 996, no. 389/2) and in a signed work in the Museum Boymans, Rotterdam (see, I, Bergström, Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Seventeenth Century, p. 149, fig. 131).

Sale: Christie's, London, July 18, 1980, lot 130 (as by W.C. Heda) with Silvano Lodi, Campione with Johnny van Haeften Ltd., London, 1984 Private collection, Germany with Johnny van Haeften Ltd., London, 1997, acquired by the Deutsches Brotmuseum, Ul