Still Life with Gilt Goblet

The support consists of four horizontally grained oak planks. The panel has been thinned and cradled. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1605. The panel could have been ready for use by 1616, but a date in or after 1622 is more likely. The thin, smooth ground is whitish. The composition was painted from the back to the front, and the objects were reserved in the background. It was smoothly painted, with more impasted paint to indicate the high relief of the objects and the texture of the tablecloth.

Good. There are some areas of retouching along the joins.

...; collection Richedot family, formed in the 17th century in Holland, from the 18th century until the 1970s at the family seat, Château de Choisey, near Dole (Jura);¹¹According to the catalogue for the sale, Paris (Palais d’Orsay), 13 December 1977, no. 18....; sale, Paris (Palais d’Orsay), 13 December 1977, no. 18;...; from Noortman and Brod Gallery, London, fl. 3,000,000, to the museum, with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt, the Jubileumfonds, the Dutch State and the Rijksmuseum-Stichting, 1984

ObjectNumber: SK-A-4830

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

The size and quality of this sumptuous still life make it the largest and most impressive of Willem Claesz Heda’s paintings. It is also in very good condition. The large still life of c. 1615 by Floris van Dijck in the Rijksmuseum (SK-A-4821) represents the beginning of the Dutch tradition of this genre, and the banquet piece of 1627 by Pieter Claesz (SK-A-4646) shows it in its maturity. This work illustrates the next stage, and is a high point in the development of still-life painting. Viewed from a considerably lower vantage point than the above two, one sees the sumptuous ensemble laid out on the table. Pieter Claesz’s variegated colours have made way for a more muted palette in which grey tints, some of them tending towards blue, predominate alongside whites, greens and yellows. Above all, though, it is the metal and glass objects that are responsible for the lively interplay of shadows and reflections. The table is so crowded that the objects overlap. The cylindrical salt-cellar of engraved silver, the green rummer, the tazza lying on the white napkin, the gilt goblet and the large pewter jug form a tight-knit group that stands out against the brownish grey background. The dish of oysters, the pewter plates jutting out over the edge of the table with a twist of paper containing pepper and a broken loaf of bread, the rummer and a similar gilt goblet feature in earlier still lifes by Pieter Claesz and Heda.³³Luxurious goblets of this kind usually belonged to municipalities and the boards of guilds (see Frederiks IV, 1961, pp. 7, 11, 15-16, 19, 25, nos. 12, 18, 26, 27, 33, 44) and were used on official occasions. Evidently they were also made available to painters as models. A gilt goblet with the figure of St George can be seen in a painting of 1612 by Clara Peeters now in Karlsruhe (illustrated in Brunner-Bulst 2004a, p. 154, fig. 34), and with slightly different details by Claesz in 1624, now in Dresden (Brunner-Bulst 2004a, p. 17, no. 10; see also p. 258, no. 94, for another goblet, and p. 260, no. 97, for a depiction of the goblet of St Martin made for the Haarlem brewers’ guild in 1604, for which see Baarsen in Amsterdam 1993, pp. 447-48, no. 108). Several of the objects in this painting also feature in other still lifes by Heda: the tazza with its floral motifs (SK-A-137), the large pewter jug,⁴⁴Its first appearance is in the Banquet piece of 1633 in Haarlem; see Brunner-Bulst 2004a, pp. 172-73, figs. 54, 55. This motif was introduced in 1632 in a still life by Jan Jansz den Uyl. and the superb little jug of vinegar made of Venetian glass.

Almost all of the objects in this still life recur in the Banquet Piece with Mince Pie in the National Gallery in Washington (also dated 1635), which is as wide as the one in Amsterdam but much higher and is on canvas.⁵⁵See Wheelock in coll. cat. Washington 1995, pp. 99-102. That painting has a similar tonality and is virtually the mirror image of the present one. Heda painted only a few such sumptuous still lifes, the earliest of which are on panel⁶⁶Vroom 1980, I, p. 57, fig. 71, p. 63, fig. 78, II, pp. 67-68, 76, nos. 335, 343, 370., while most of those dating from after 1649 are on canvas.⁷⁷Vroom 1980, I, p. 52, fig. 64, II, pp. 77-79, nos. 372, 379a, 382.

Interestingly, there are several 17th-century copies of this painting on canvas. A woman was added on the left in one of them, and a basket of cheese on the right (fig. a).⁸⁸Sale, London (Sotheby's), 23 April 1998, no. 13. Vroom attributes the copy on canvas he reproduces to Gerrit Heda; see Vroom 1945, fig. 119, and Vroom 1980, II, p. 57, no. 274, p. 70, no. 351b. Photographs of two copies on canvas, which measure 79.5 x 104 cm and 92 x 122 cm, are in the RKD, The Hague.

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. 120.

Vroom 1980, I, pp. 60-61, II, p. 70, no. 351a; Segal in Delft etc. 1988, pp. 137-38; Kloek 1989; Gemar-Koeltszsch 1995, II, p. 425, no. 157/13

1992, p. 56, no. A 4830; 2007, no. 120

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Willem Claesz. Heda, Still Life with Gilt Goblet, 1635', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8634