Lot 32: - Jan Jansz. den Uyl the Elder , Utrecht 1595/96-1639/40 Amsterdam Still life with a pewter jug, a tazza on its side, a bread roll, a crab in a pewter dish and other objects on a table draped in a green cloth oil on panel

oil on panel

measurements note 67.7 by 87.2 cm.; 26 3/4 by 34 3/8 in.

P. de Boer, "J.J. den Uyl", in Oud Holland, 1940, vol. LVII, p. 62, no. 'a';
L.J. Bol, Holländische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts nahe den grossen Meistern, Braunschweig 1969, p. 72-3;
Antiek, vol. II, no. 5, 1967, p. 151;
N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message..., Schiedam 1980, vol. I, pp. 219-20, vol. II, p. 129, no. 666, reproduced.

Private collection, Dusseldorf, before 1940;
With Hans M. Cramer, The Hague, before 1969;
A.W. Lowenthal, New York;
From whom acquired by the present collector.

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION
This is one of the fifteen works by Den Uyl identified in Pieter de Boer's groundbreaking article on the artist published in Oud Holland in 1940.υ1 De Boer listed eight works that he knew first hand, five of which were signed with the artist's owl device; he then listed six further works that he knew only from old photographs, of which the present work was one. De Boer's article began to make sense of Den Uyl's oeuvre for the first time and in it he claimed to have 'retrieved [the artist] from forgetlfulness'.υ2 Prior to his research, the majority of the artist's works had been previously concealed by mis-attibutions to Willem Claesz. Heda and other painters of the monochrome banketje; for example, the picture in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin (now the Bode Museum) was catalogued as by Heda in the pre-1940s catalogues of the collection and only after 1940 was it re-attributed to Den Uyl.υ3 Den Uyl's approach to the banketjes for which he is best known was a very individual one and it is because of this, and perhaps because he was based in Amsterdam not Haarlem, that he stands apart from his peers in this field. He was able to reproduce the scratches, dents and reflections on metallic surfaces with unrivalled skill and the silvery black tones he used to achieve this are entirely his own. The present work is a beautiful example of the intense contrast Den Uyl achieves between the dazzling white tablecloth and the rich black of the pewter jug. In terms of composition it employs the same motif that recurs again and again in his oeuvre, that of an overturned tazza sitting on a crumpled tablecloth, its base placed just in front of and overlapping the base of the jug. This motif, and indeed the very same jug, reappears in his large upright still life sold New York, Sotheby's, 14 January 1988, lot 41 (for $2,200,000) and, with the jug turned around and its lid open, in the paintings in Berlin, Groningen, Copenhagen, and that sold recently in London, Sotheby's, 5 December 2007, lot 39 (for £1,800,000).υ4 1. See under Literature.
2. De Boer, op. cit., p. 64.
3. See, for example, H. Posse (rev.), Die Gemäldegalerie des Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums, Berlin 1911, p. 289, reproduced.
4. Berlin, Bode Museum; Groningen, Municipal Museum; Copenhagen, State Museum of Fine Arts; see Vroom, under Literature, vol. II, nos. 665, 669, and 670 respectively.