Still Life with Flowers in a Wan-Li Vase

The work was painted on a thin copper plate. The ground layer consists of lead white paint with a slight admixture of lamp black and yellow ochre. Infrared reflectography revealed a concise underdrawing on top of this layer. A vertical line was drawn in the middle of the copper plate as a starting point for the underdrawing. There is a pentimento in the vase. Most of the flowers were reserved in the green-brown background. A smooth underpaint was applied in the reserves. The flowers were then built up with several thin glazes.

Wallert et al. in Amsterdam 1999, pp. 48-51

Fair. The varnish has yellowed.

...; donated to the museum by Dr Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), The Hague, 4 May 1890¹¹RANH, ARS, IS, inv. 170, no. 219 (4 May 1890); RANH, ARS, Kop, inv. 289, p. 264, no. 606 (9 May 1890).

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1522

Credit line: Gift of A. Bredius, The Hague

In his early work Ambrosius Bosschaert depicted his bouquets against a neutral background. From 1618 onwards, when he was living in Utrecht, he placed his vases in a niche, probably under Roelant Savery’s influence.³³Bol 1960, p. 29. Around 1619, the year he moved to Breda, he began replacing the niches with windows, but he also continued depicting vases against a neutral background, as in the present painting.⁴⁴Bol 1982, p. 51; Segal in Amsterdam 1984a, pp. 38-39. Both the composition and the shape of the bouquet are symmetrical. The flowers are portrayed in their entirety as far as possible, and the light is distributed evenly. These features are characteristic of the style of the first generation of flower painters, to which Bosschaert belonged. The blue-and-white porcelain vase is from China’s Wan-li period (1573-1619). Wan-li porcelain was brought to Europe in Portuguese ships soon after 1600, and often features in still lifes by Bosschaert and his followers.

As Bergström and Bol have pointed out, Bosschaert worked after studies, either watercolour drawings or oil sketches.⁵⁵Bergström 1957, pp. 62-64, 69; Bol 1960, p. 20. Repetitions frequently occur in his oeuvre, and the artist did not go to great lengths to vary specific motifs. For example, the carnation on the table in the Rijksmuseum painting can be found in exactly the same place in several other paintings from around 1618-19.⁶⁶Such as Los Angeles, private collection, and The Hague, Mauritshuis; both paintings are illustrated in coll. cat. The Hague 1987, pp. 79, 81. In addition to his use of studies, Bosschaert may also have copied parts of other paintings still present in the studio, as repetitions most often occur in paintings from the same period.⁷⁷Segal in Amsterdam 1984a, p. 31.

Bol noted that a still life with flowers painted by Bosschaert’s pupil and brother-in-law Balthasar van der Ast is very similar to the present painting.⁸⁸Private collection; Bol 1960, p. 37; Broos in The Hague-San Francisco 1990, pp. 140-44 (ill.). This picture was probably painted around 1623, four years after Bosschaert’s Rijksmuseum painting. Both artists used a gilt-mounted Wan-li vase, and their bouquets have more or less the same shape, with a large tulip as the uppermost flower. The similarities between their work and the fact that Bosschaert’s monogram can be read as ‘AB’ as well as ‘BA’ explains why the present painting was once assigned to Van der Ast.⁹⁹Old label on the reverse of the panel.

Gerdien Wuestman, 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. 28.

Bol 1960, p. 68, no. 47, with earlier literature; Gemar-Koeltzsch 1995, II, p. 165, no. 51/7

1891, p. 20, no. 158a; 1903, pp. 59-60, no. 590; 1934, p. 58, no. 590; 1960, p. 52, no. 590; 1976, p. 136, no. A 1522; 2007, no. 28

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Ambrosius Bosschaert, Still Life with Flowers in a Wan-Li Vase, 1619', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6190