.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This early still life by Willem Claesz. Heda, which is well preserved on a single oak panel, was previously unknown to scholars, having remained in the same private collection for a century. It is exemplary of the so-called tonal, or monochrome still life, that Heda, along with his elder contemporary Pieter Claesz, is credited with inventing. Dated 1629, the carefully constructed composition typifies Heda's earliest style and displays the very beginnings of his experimentation with composition.
The meticulous positioning of certain objects, for example the slanting knife, ribbon, pewter plate overhanging the table edge and the lemon peel spiralling across its surface – all recurrent motifs in Heda's work throughout his career - increases the sense of depth within the composition. A similar ornate pocket-watch with blue ribbon reappears in his work on several occasions, including in a painting of the same year at the Mauritshuis, The Hague (fig. 1; inv.no. 596). In both works, Heda experimented with overlapping his objects; the large identical upright roemers, their convex surfaces reflecting and refracting incoming light from a window, are complemented by smaller upturned roemers to the right. These elements are designed not only to keep the eye moving across the picture, but also to display the artist's technical virtuosity. From the late 1620s onwards, his works would start to become less closely cropped, less monochrome in palette and grander in composition, with a wider repertoire of foods and objects displayed ostentatiously on tables draped with green or white cloths. We are grateful to Dr. Fred Meijer for confirming the attribution on the basis of first-hand inspection.
A note on the provenance:
Henrij Th. Cox, who acquired this painting in the early twentieth century, was a lieutenant-at-sea, as well as an intellectual, an entrepreneur and a writer. He was the co-founder of several companies in the ports of Amsterdam, such as the Amsterdamsch Havenbedrijf and the Nederlandsche Steenkolen Handelmaatschappij. As one of the directors of the Hollandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij, the Dutch Steamboat Company, he controlled scheduled shipping services to various British, European and West African ports from his post in Amsterdam. Cox was also an avid sailor and a passionate scholar of Napoleon; his book Napoleon krijgsgevangen: historie en legende was published in 1916. Born in Batavia as the son of a successful businessman, Cox moved to The Netherlands as a young boy, where he grew up surrounded by Asian works of art collected by his parents in the Indies. He himself started collecting with the help of the eminent connoisseur and collector Frits Lugt and held a particular fondness for maritime subjects. By the end of his lifetime, his collection comprised works by renowned masters of the Dutch Golden Age such as Willem van de Velde, Lieve Verschuier, Willem Kalf, Aert van der Neer, Aelbert Cuyp and Jan Siberechts amongst others.
Prior to its acquisition by Cox, the painting had been in the exceptional collection of New York lawyer and financier Edward Rathbone Bacon (1848-1915). Although important works from the collection now hang at the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bacon was very secretive and the extent of his collecting was unknown during his lifetime. After his death, the collection passed to his brother Walter and sister-in-law Virginia Purdy Bacon, youngest granddaughter of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt.
The meticulous positioning of certain objects, for example the slanting knife, ribbon, pewter plate overhanging the table edge and the lemon peel spiralling across its surface – all recurrent motifs in Heda's work throughout his career - increases the sense of depth within the composition. A similar ornate pocket-watch with blue ribbon reappears in his work on several occasions, including in a painting of the same year at the Mauritshuis, The Hague (fig. 1; inv.no. 596). In both works, Heda experimented with overlapping his objects; the large identical upright roemers, their convex surfaces reflecting and refracting incoming light from a window, are complemented by smaller upturned roemers to the right. These elements are designed not only to keep the eye moving across the picture, but also to display the artist's technical virtuosity. From the late 1620s onwards, his works would start to become less closely cropped, less monochrome in palette and grander in composition, with a wider repertoire of foods and objects displayed ostentatiously on tables draped with green or white cloths. We are grateful to Dr. Fred Meijer for confirming the attribution on the basis of first-hand inspection.
A note on the provenance:
Henrij Th. Cox, who acquired this painting in the early twentieth century, was a lieutenant-at-sea, as well as an intellectual, an entrepreneur and a writer. He was the co-founder of several companies in the ports of Amsterdam, such as the Amsterdamsch Havenbedrijf and the Nederlandsche Steenkolen Handelmaatschappij. As one of the directors of the Hollandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij, the Dutch Steamboat Company, he controlled scheduled shipping services to various British, European and West African ports from his post in Amsterdam. Cox was also an avid sailor and a passionate scholar of Napoleon; his book Napoleon krijgsgevangen: historie en legende was published in 1916. Born in Batavia as the son of a successful businessman, Cox moved to The Netherlands as a young boy, where he grew up surrounded by Asian works of art collected by his parents in the Indies. He himself started collecting with the help of the eminent connoisseur and collector Frits Lugt and held a particular fondness for maritime subjects. By the end of his lifetime, his collection comprised works by renowned masters of the Dutch Golden Age such as Willem van de Velde, Lieve Verschuier, Willem Kalf, Aert van der Neer, Aelbert Cuyp and Jan Siberechts amongst others.
Prior to its acquisition by Cox, the painting had been in the exceptional collection of New York lawyer and financier Edward Rathbone Bacon (1848-1915). Although important works from the collection now hang at the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bacon was very secretive and the extent of his collecting was unknown during his lifetime. After his death, the collection passed to his brother Walter and sister-in-law Virginia Purdy Bacon, youngest granddaughter of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt.