Plates of cherries and wild strawberries, with grapes, apples, pears, plums and other fruits on a stone ledge; a fragment

Publishing this still life in 1997, Fred. G. Meijer identified it as a fragment of a larger composition dating to 1630 (loc. cit.). Meijer proposed that another panel, now in a Swiss private collection, would have formed the right hand section of the painting which, in its entirety was produced in collaboration with Pieter Claesz (loc. cit., p. 18, fig. 4). The Swiss panel includs the edge of the stone ledge missing here, and depicts a roemer and additional fruit spilling across the ledge. Meijer compared the roemer in the right hand section to other depictions in paintings by Claesz. dating to the 1630s, leading him to conclude that Claesz. had been responsible for painting the glass vessel while the fruit, more prevalent in the present left hand panel, was the work of van Schooten.

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.