Lot 58: - Jan Jansz. Treck , Amsterdam 1605/6 - 1652 still life with a roemer, a beer glass, a silver tazza on its side, a salt cellar and other objects on a table draped in red cloth oil on panel

indistinctly signed and dated on the corner of the napkin lower left: JTR(?)ECK...44 oil on panel

measurements note 50.8 by 66.7 cm.; 20 by 26 1/4 in.

Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; & Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Still Lifes of the Golden Age: Northern European Paintings from the Heinz Family Collection, 14 May - 4 September 1989; & 18 October - 31 December 1989, no. 41.

N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message as Intimated by the Painters of the 'Monochrome Banketje', vol. I, Schiedam 1980, p. 213, reproduced fig. 289; vol. II, p. 125, no. 643;
I. Bergstrom and A.K. Wheelock, Jr. (ed.), Still Lifes of the Golden Age: Northern European Paintings from the Heinz Family Collection, exhibition catalogue, Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, 14 May - 4 September 1989; & Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 18 October - 31 December 1989, cat. no. 41.

Private collection, Paris;
Acquired by the present owner in 1985.

PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION
Executed in 1644, this is a rare work by the Amsterdam painter Jan Jansz. Treck, an artist whose securely attributable surviving works are few in number. Although many of them have in the past been mis-attributed to his brother-in-law, Jan Jansz. den Uyl, Vroom could identify only fifteen works by Treck, of which one is considered a collaborative work between Treck and Den Uyl due to its being signed by both.υ1

Like Den Uyl, Treck died at a relatively young age. He trained in his brother-in-law's workshop in 1623 and the two families always maintained a close contact; indeed, after Den Uyl's death in 1639/40 Treck took in and cared for his widow and children. Some of Treck's still lifes are inconceivable without his brother-in-law's influence, such as the Still life with a pewter flagon in the National Gallery, London,υ2 whose shiny black pewter and stark white tablecloth are conceived wholly in the manner of Den Uyl. The latter's influence is palpable in almost all of Treck's paintings; in the present work the niche inset into the wall behind, bedecked with a pipe and a cabbage leaf, is a motif lifted directly from Den Uyl's oeuvre; see, for example, the Still life with a pewter jug and an overturned tazza sold in these Rooms, 5 December 2007, lot 39. The objects themselves, which seem so haphazardly stacked-up and precariously balanced on one another, are grounded by the solid verticals of the tall beer glass and the niche, the latter of which defines the room in which the still life is set. A very similar work, built around the same triangular composition and set before a niche, sold in these Rooms, 10 July 2002, lot 30.



1. See Vroom, under Literature, and for the collaborative work, vol. I, p. 214, reproduced fig. 290; vol. II, p. 126, no. 652 (under Treck) & p. 129, no. 668 (under Den Uyl).
2. Ibid., vol. I, p. 209, reproduced fig. 284; vol. II, p. 126, no. 647.