The Utrecht artist Willem Ormea probably studied with his father Marcus Ormea, of whom no pictures are known. Marcus is, however, documented having gifted a still life of fish on a beach to a local hospital in Utrecht (see E. de Jongh, F.G. Meijer, L.M. Helmus, Vis : Stillevens van Hollandse en Vlaamse meesters 1550-1700, Utrecht, 2004, p. 418). Also Willem’s paintings depict mostly fish on a beach, often painted in collaboration with a member of the Willaerts family, who executed the beach or coastal view in the background. Ormea must have used a perpetual set of fish studies whilst compiling his fantastic heaps of fish in his studio: many of the fish, such as the haddock, thornback ray and red gurnard, reoccur, sometimes mirrored, in his oeuvre. The present composition is amongst the more elaborate of his fish still lifes and closely resembles the 1658 dated picture in the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans of almost identical measurements.


We are grateful to Mr. Otto Nelemans for suggesting Isaac Willaerts as the painter of the coastal scene in the background. He has pointed out the remarkable similarities to the picture in New Orleans, and to Ormea’s paintings in the Museum of Fine Art Budapest and the Centraal Museum Utrecht of 1657, the latter co-signed ‘I. Willaerts’.