Still Life with Cheeses

The support consists of three horizontally grained oak planks. It was cradled around 1900, probably thinned and slightly trimmed at the bottom. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1588. The panel could have been ready for use by 1599, but a date in or after 1605 is more likely. The thin and smoothly applied ground is probably greyish. The paint was smoothly and meticulously applied, with impasto for the textures and highlights.

Good. The painting is slightly abraded, and there are several stable cracks in the three panels.

...; with the dealer Frederik Muller, Amsterdam, c. 1928;¹¹Note RMA....; collection Westerman-Holstein, Amsterdam;²²Note RMA....; from a private collection, fl. 680,000, to the museum, through the mediation of Sotheby’s/Mak van Waay, with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt and the Rijksmuseum-Stichting, 1982

ObjectNumber: SK-A-4821

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt and the Rijksmuseum-Stichting

This laid table with cheeses and other food, a so-called breakfast piece, is seen from a relatively high viewpoint. The objects are depicted in a soft light against a dark background. The artist employed a meticulous technique to achieve a convincing imitation of textures in which light and reflections play an important part. The painting is a typical and well-preserved example of the earliest phase of 17th-century Dutch still-life painting. Distinctive features of that early phase include the fairly variegated palette and the fact that there is little overlapping of the objects, partly because of the high vantage point. The type of still life with a laid table follows the example of the work of Antwerp contemporaries like Osias Beert and Clara Peeters, which was developed further in Haarlem in the early decades of the 17th century by painters like Van Dijck, Floris van Schooten, Nicolaes Gillis and the early Pieter Claesz.³³See Brunner-Bulst 2004a, pp. 136-45; Biesboer 2004, pp. 10-18.

The Rijksmuseum painting is one of the largest of the dozen similar still lifes by Van Dijck, some of which bear the monogram FVD and are dated between 1610 and 1622.⁴⁴Meijer lists the dated works in Amsterdam 1993, p. 605, note 1. Two more can be added to those. The first is on panel, 80.5 x 124 cm; sale, Paris (Drouot-Richelieu), 25 March 1994, no. 12 (later with Noortman Master Paintings and Otto Naumann Ltd.); the second is on panel, 74.5 x 114 cm; sale, London (Sotheby’s), 14 December 2000, no. 25. All show a heavily laden table on which stacked cheeses are surrounded by food, drink and various other objects. Although the paintings differ in size and details, all have several motifs in common, such as the apple peel hanging down from the table, and the pewter plate with half an apple balancing precariously on the edge. As is customary with Van Dijck, the table is covered with a pinkish red damask cloth with a floral pattern, on top of which is a white damask cloth trimmed with lace. The central panel of the white tablecloth is decorated with two birds flanking a tulip. A damask cloth with this motif in the Rijksmuseum is associated with Passchier Lammertijn of Flanders, who manufactured damask in Haarlem in this period.⁵⁵See Burgers in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 487-88, no. 166. The lace-trimmed damask is almost identical to the one in a painting by Floris van Dijck dated 1610 in a private collection.⁶⁶Panel, 75.8 x 114.5 cm; illustrated in Bergström 1957, p. 103, fig. 92; sale, London (Sotheby’s), 8 December 2004, no. 16. A painting of 1622 in a private collection has a damask cloth which is similar but has a different lace trimming; illustrated in Amsterdam 1970, cover, pp. 36-37, no. 7. The 1610 painting also has the same spouted jug of grey German stoneware that was probably made by Christian Knütgen of Siegburg, and the porcelain bowl (a klapmuts, which has the shape of a helmet) holding apples, and ‘carrack’ or Wan-li porcelain plates.⁷⁷On these objects see Meijer in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 604-05, no. 276.

Despite the presence of similar objects in Van Dijck’s painting of 1610, they are arranged in a more harmonious and clearer way in the Rijksmuseum composition, which should therefore be dated c. 1615.

The crumbly cut faces of the cheeses show that all three are old, well-matured varieties. The one at the bottom is recognizable as old Gouda, and the one at the top is green Edam. Many connotations were attached to cheese,⁸⁸See De Jongh in Auckland etc. 1982, pp. 65-69, no. 4. but these ones are probably intended to urge moderation.⁹⁹See Bruyn 1996; Chong and Kloek in Amsterdam-Cleveland 1999, p. 132.

Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 55.

Meijer in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 604-05, no. 276; Bruyn 1996; Chong and Kloek in Amsterdam-Cleveland 1999, pp. 130-32, no. 10; Brunner-Bulst 2004a, p. 137

1992, p. 51, no. A 4821; 2007, no. 55

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Floris Claesz. van Dijck, Still Life with Cheeses, c. 1615', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8296