Pieter Claesz (Berchem 1596 – Haarlem 1660) Roelof Koets (Haarlem 1592/93 – Haarlem 1655)

A Still Life with a Roemer, Wine Jug and Stangenglas, a Roll, Oyster and Lamb Roast on Pewter Plates, Silver Salt Cellar, Two Knives, Pepper, a Napkin, Hazelnuts, Walnuts, with Apples, Quince and Grapes in a Wicker Basket on a Cloth Draped Table
signed and dated Aº PC 1650 in the lower right

oil on panel

35 x 48 inches (89.2 x 122.2 cm.)

PROVENANCE: Sir John Turing Bt.; Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, December 11, 1987, lot 14, where purchased by Private Collection, London until the present time

LITERATURE: Martina Brunner-Bulst, Pieter Claesz. der Hauptmeister des Haarlemer Stillebens im 17. Jahrhundert, Kritischer Oeuvrekatalog, Luca Verlag, Lingen, 2004, pp. 310, 312, no. 183 illustrated, and p. 355, cat. 183
Martina Brunner-Bulst, “Pieter Claesz: The Rediscovery of the Painter and his Origins,” exhibition catalogue Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Pieter Claesz, Master of Haarlem Still Life, November 27, 2004 – April 4, 2005 and traveling to Kunsthaus, Zurich and National Gallery of Art, Washington, p. 139, fn. 30

Pieter Claesz is regarded as one of the most important still life painters in seventeenth-century Holland.¹ Roelof Koets was a Haarlem colleague whose first collaboration with Claesz was in 1634. Biographical information on both artists are scarce. What is known is that they both successfully worked in Haarlem for decades; and throughout their careers Claesz’s influence on Koets’s work is notable. From 1644 until 1652/53 only about nine more works are known to have been jointly produced.² Only one work in their collaboration is jointly signed.³ All of the others, as in this example, are signed with Claesz’s monogram. It is most likely that the works were sold as solely by Claesz. Approximately 250 works are known by Claesz today, who was already copied by others artists during his lifetime. ⁴This monumental work thus represents one of the few existing examples of the coupling of these two artists’ complementary talents.

By 1640 responding to the needs of a wealthy merchant class and stimulated by the still lifes of Jan Davidsz. de Heem and Abraham van Beyeren, which had begun to display an ever increasing baroque richness of style and objects, Claesz followed suit with his own often large-scale banquet pieces. Koets was enlisted to paint the fruit in these compositions, at which he excelled. ⁵

Our work palpitates with color and light. Claesz’s objects and food, on the right half of the panel, gleam incandescently. Contrasting surfaces and textures are realistically rendered, underlined by the folds of the foreground napkin. Koets’s cascading fruit on the left, delivers the desired mastery of his subject that Claesz sought as well as a fulcrum of color. The artists’ individual skills remain distinct but fully integrated. We are presented with a table all but overflowing with fine food and drink, which even within the wealthiest households of Haarlem would not have been standard fare. There is not only an omission of food usually consumed at such meals, but remarkably even lowly items such as the white roll was costly, whole wheat or rye being the norm. Depicting both domestic and imported delicacies and finery, the panel is more emblematic of various luxuries obtainable within this prosperous community than a reflection of reality. ⁶

Martina Brunner-Bulst has viewed this painting on March 9, 2007 and confirms the painting to be by Pieter Claesz and Roelof Koets as well as dated 1650.

¹ Karel Schampers, “Foreward,” exhibition catalogue Pieter Claesz, op. cit., p. 5.
² Brunner-Bulst, exhibition catalogue Pieter Claesz, op. cit, p. 57.
³ Ibid., p. 57.
⁴ Pieter Biesboer, “Pieter Claesz in Haarlem,” exhibition catalogue Pieter Claesz, op. cit., pp. 21 & 26.
⁵ Ibid., p. 22.
⁶ Henry D. Gregory, “Narrative and Meaning in Pieter Claesz’s Still Life,” exhibition catalogue Pieter Claesz, op. cit., pp. 99-101.

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