Lot 41: Pieter Binoit (Cologne 1590/3-Hanau 1632)

Tulips, irises, pink and white roses, narcissi, primroses and other flowers in a stone vase with butterflies, a caterpillar, a snail and a stag beetle on a ledge
oil on panel
34 1/4 x 23 1/4 in. (87 x 59 cm.)

E. Greindl, Les Peintres Flamands de Nature Morte au XVII Siecle, Belgium, 1983, p. 61; p. 63, pl. 36; and p. 338, no. 25.
G. Bott, Die Stillebenmaler Soreau, Binoit, Codino und Marrell in Hanau und Frankfurt 1600-1650, Hanau, 2001, p. 51, pl. 45; p. 53; and p. 201, no. WV.B.18, illustrated.

Baron Léopold Duvivier (1804-1878), Kasteel Hof ter Zielbeek, Ruisbroek aan-de-Rupel, and by descent to the present owner.

In the ownership of the same family since the mid-nineteenth century, this is one of Binoit's grandest statements as a flower painter and confirms his place as among the greatest of all German painters of still-lifes. Born in Cologne, the son of Jacques Binoit from Tournai, the artist was apprenticed to Daniel Soreau in Hanau sometime after 1600, where he trained there alongside Sebastian Stoskopff and his master's twin sons, Peter and Isaac Soreau. He worked in Frankfurt around 1620, returning to Hanau in 1627, the year of his marriage to Daniel Soreau's niece, where he remained until his untimely death, aged around forty, in 1632.

Binoit's oeuvre is not extensive and although he painted more fruit and game still-lifes, less than twenty pure flower pictures survive, the majority of which are on a small scale. After around 1620, Binoit tended to repeat his more successful compositions to satisfy demand. So, for instance, there are additional versions of the pair of pictures, dated 1623, sold in these Rooms, 13 December 2000, lot 9 (£575,000), and two replicas of the Porcelain Vase with Flowers, signed and dated 1620, (Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt), in the museums at Pommersfelden and Mainz (see G. Bott, loc. cit., pp. 198-201). The present picture is therefore known in another version on copper (recorded in the collection of Dr. Herbert Girardet, 1979), which, although signed and dated (1627), is not necessarily the prime treatment. Indeed, Greindl (op. cit., p. 21), deems it inferior, remarking on the present picture: 'Fait singulier, ce tableau dépourvu de signature, s'avère d'une qualité sensiblement supérieure à celle de la Gerbe des fleurs dans un vase laquelle est signée'. Assuming the two versions can be dated to 1627, they were painted by Binoit in the year of his marriage and at the height of his artistic powers. Certainly, this and the Darmstadt composition represent the artist's largest and most ambitious efforts as a flower painter, remarkable for the sheer numbers of flower varieties depicted and the minutely detailed nature of their observation.

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