Still life with overturned basket - 17th century Dutch school

Oil on panel. 17th-century Dutch school.
In an uncluttered setting consisting of a gray stone entablature and a wall in similar tones, the contents of a fruit basket are spread out before our eyes. Quinces, peaches, apricots, cherries and grapes are all delicacies that the viewer can enjoy with his or her eyes alone.
Although it's difficult to attribute our composition to a particular painter, we can find similarities with the style of some illustrious Dutch painters of the Golden Age. For example, a number of compositions with inverted elements and a disorganized appearance can be found in the corpus of the Antwerp painter Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606 - 1684) or his son Cornelis (1631 - 1695). The latter were often enriched with luxurious crockery and silverware. The ornamental sobriety of our work brings to mind the Dutch Balthasar van der Ast (1593 - 1657), or his nephews Ambrosius II (1609 - 1645) and Johannes Bosschaert (c. 1607 - 1628), who did not hesitate to create movement in subjects deemed static through the effect of leaning objects or whirling insects. In this respect, our painter's way of building up the volumes of fruit is very close to their art.
This pictorial genre is above all a vanitas reminding us of the ephemeral aspect of all life and its fragility. Thus, the picked fruit doomed to decay illustrates the first point, while the frail butterfly evokes the second.

We have chosen to present this painting in a Dutch blackened wood frame with an upside-down profile.
Dimensions: 33.5 x 41 cm - 49 x 57 cm with frame

Bibliography :
- GRIMM, Claus, Natures mortes, Herscher, 1992
- GREINDL, Edith, Les peintres flamands de nature morte au XVIIe siècle, Michel Lefebvre, 1983
- BERGSTROM, Ingvar, HEDSTROM, Christina, Dutch still life paintings in the seventeenth century, Göteborg, 1947
- VAN DER WILLIGEN, A, MEIGER, Fred G, A dictionary of Dutch and Flemish still life painters working in oils 1525 - 1725, Primavera Press, 2003
- MEIJER, Fred G, Dutch and Flemish still-life paintings, collection of the Ashmolean Museum Oxford, Waanders BV, 2005

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