Name: JAN DAVIDSZ. DE HEEM (UTRECHT 1606-1684 ANTWERP)
Brand: A pewter flagon with a small roemer hanging from its spout and a Chinese Wan-li dish with fruit on a high stone ledge, a heap of pears, apples, plums, grapes and citrus fruit on a parallel low stone ledge
Price: 95000.00 EUR
Availability: SoldOut

JAN DAVIDSZ. DE HEEM (UTRECHT 1606-1684 ANTWERP)
A pewter flagon with a small roemer hanging from its spout and a Chinese Wan-li dish with fruit on a high stone ledge, a heap of pears, apples, plums, grapes and citrus fruit on a parallel low stone ledge
signed and dated ‘J.D.Heem Fecit 1627’ (lower centre)
oil on panel
61.4 x 63.3 cm. (24¹⁄₈ x 24⁷⁄₈ in.)

with Frieda Hinze, Berlin, 1965.
Private collection, New York.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, London, 9 December 1992, lot 26 (£90,200).
J.E. Safra, New York; his sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 24 January 2002, lot 18 ($87,000).
with Johnny Van Haeften, London, 2002.
with A. Wieg, Amsterdam, where acquired by the previous owner in 2002.

E. Greindl, Les Peintres Flamands de Nature Morte au XVIIe siècle, Sterrebeek, 1983, pp. 123, 243 and 360, no. 23, fig. 122.
F.G. Meijer, ‘Jan Davidsz. de Heem's Earliest Paintings, 1626-1628’, Hoogsteder-Naumann Mercury, VII, 1988, pp. 30-32, 36, fig. 5, note 5.
F.G. Meijer, Jan Davidsz. de Heem 1606-1684, PhD dissertation, 2016, I, p. 46, no. A 004, illustrated; II, pp. 10-11, no. A 004.

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Lot Essay

This still life is one of the earliest known works by Jan Davidsz. de Heem and one of only two pictures from 1627 that have survived.

De Heem most likely trained for a period of time with Balthasar van der Ast, who had registered as a member of the Guild in 1619 in Utrecht, where he stayed until 1632. Although heavily indebted to Van der Ast’s compositions with two levels from circa half a decade earlier, it appears the young De Heem, aged 20 or 21 years, here explores new elements and creates novel clusters of motifs, rather differently from how Van der Ast treated his smaller still lifes (F.G. Meijer, 1988, op. cit., p. 31). Fred Meijer has also pointed out the similarities with Johannes Torrentius’ famous still life of 1614, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The spouted pewter flagon and its low vantage point are indeed much alike. Meijer argues De Heem may have seen the picture by Torrentius in Lisse in or before 1627 (F.G. Meijer, 2016, op. cit., p. 46).

We are grateful to Dr. Fred Meijer for first-hand inspection of the picture and his assistance in cataloguing this lot. This painting will be included as catalogue no. 004 in Meijer’s forthcoming monograph on De Heem, to be published in the spring of 2024.