File:Still Life with Cherries (Osias Beert) - Nationalmuseum - 20384.tif

English: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 5:

Technical notes: The support is an oak panel constructed of two horizontal, butt-joined, radial boards with a horizontal grain. The panel has been thinned and a cradle attached to the verso. Slight bevelling occurs on the verso along the upper left edge; the horizontal bars of the wooden cradle now conceal the top and bottom edges. A series of small notches along the right edge indicates that the panel has been cut down on this side, as also suggested by the cut-off shadow thrown by the pewter plate towards the right and by the tip of a green leaf visible in the area of shadow at the left edge. A horizontal crack, running the width of the panel c. 12.5– 14.0 cm from the top edge, has been repaired and limited worm damage is visible on the verso at the lower right. On the verso is an inscription in red chalk, “D” and an old label with “2783” written in brown ink. Dendro - chronological analysis has determined a felling date for the tree between c. 1591 and 1605. With two years of seasoning, the panel would thus have been available for use around 1593 at the earliest. The wood originates from the Baltic region.

Paint was applied thinly in opaque and semi-transparent layers over a smooth, medium thick, off-white ground, probably chalk, with low impasto in the opaque white highlights on the cherries and along the rim of the pewter dish at the left. No underdrawing was visible during examination with infrared reflectography. Localized areas were underpainted with a light, cool grey paint, visible under the cherries, the darker grey of the pewter dish and shadow at the right. The cherries were built up of thin, fluid, semi-transparent reddish-orange paint and/or slightly thicker, opaque yellow, followed by a dark red translucent glaze. A textural, “relief” effect was achieved by using pastose paint in the stems. There are frequent, slight contour adjustments in the cherries. The two cherries lying on the table at the lower left were painted over the greyish brown table.

The painting is in good condition, although small, flaked losses of ground and paint layers occur along the edges. Retouching covers abrasion and small losses along the repaired horizontal check and there are scattered small retouches in the cherries, the pewter dish and table. A fine craquelure is present in the more thickly painted yellowish cherries. Some of the contours have been reinforced and a c. 1.5 cm wide band of repainting occurs along the bottom edge of the panel. The painting underwent conservation treatment in 1975 and 1995.

Provenance: P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1938; donated in 1939 by members of The Friends of the NM, who participated in a journey to Holland the previous year. exhibited: Stockholm 1977, no. 63; Stockholm 1980, no. 7; Stockholm 1995, no. 194; Stockholm 2000, no. 13; Stockholm 2010, no. 43. bibliography: NM Year Book 1939, no. 124, p. 160; NM Cat.1958, p. 11; Greindl 1983, p. 337, no. 77; NM Cat. 1990, p. 18.

Osias Beert was one of the first Netherlandish painters to specialize in elegant displays of food on tables. He was one of the principal exponents of the archaic formula of still life painting in which objects are seen from above. The viewer typically looks down upon an arrangement of delicate and precious objects. Here on the brown-painted surface top of the table can be seen a pewter dish full of reddish-yellow cherries. Two cherries are lying on the table to the left of the dish. The background is dark brown. Removal of the varnish in 1955 revealed part of a green leaf in the right edge. This led to the conclusion that the panel had been trimmed and that the composition once formed part of larger still life. It is characteristic of Beert that he readily repeats his motifs. Pewter plates with cherries often recur in his compositions.

A re-attribution of this small fruit still life to the Flemish still life painter Jacob Fopsen van Es was proposed by Fred G. Meijer.1 He considers that the treatment of the pewter dish with its somewhat buckled and hand-made appearance is more typical of Van Es. He also refers to the berries reflected in the rim of the dish. Here he seeks comparison with a painting by Van Es of grapes arranged in a similar way that was auctioned at Christie’s in 1995.2 The lighting on the berries is also a typical detail that recalls Van Es.3 Rebuttal can be found, however, in comparison of the technical features of this work with those of a painting by Van Es that is also in the museum’s collections, no. 75. There is much more impasto in the painting by Van Es while this work, attributed to Beert, is painted more transparently with fairly thin glazes. Beert often used this semi-translucency, which, in this and other cases, allows the grain of the wooden panel to show through in the area of the table top.

GCB

1 By discussion in the Rijksbureau in March 2008; see also photo on file at the RKD, The Hague. 2 11 January 1995, lot 15. Photo at RKD. 3 See a painting in Durham, The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, cat. 1939, no. 790. [End]

Osias Beert specialized in refined still lifes of food. At the start of the seventeenth century he executed a series of appetizing paintings in which he depicted all sorts of delicacies with great realism. Here we see a pewter bowl filled with orangey-red cherries—a recurring motif for the artist. The seemingly simple motif includes a range of refined details. The shiny gleam of the berries and their subtly shifting hues, as well as the suggestion of dents in the rim of the pewter bowl all add to the strong illusionism of the painting.