The support consists of two vertically grained oak planks and is slightly bevelled on the top, left and bottom. The panel has probably been trimmed slightly on the right. The thin and smoothly applied ground is light in colour. The paint was applied with broad strokes, with impasto for the highlights. The large objects were reserved.

Fair. The paint layer is abraded.

…; sale, Friedrich von Amerling (1803-87), Vienna (Dorotheum), 3 May 1916 sqq., no. 58, as W.C. Heda, Kr. 2,900;…; the dealer G. Arnot, London, as W.C. Heda, 1926;¹¹Note RKD.…; the dealer D.A. Hoogendijk, Amsterdam, 1932;²²Note RKD.from whom to Daniël Crena de Iongh (1888-1970), Amsterdam, Washington and Wilton (Conn.), by 1943;³³RKD, The Hague, inv. no. 460, Archive Kunsthandel D.A. Hoogendijk, no. OS 708; note RKD. by whom bequeathed to the museum, but given in usufruct to his widow, Mary Dows Herter Crena de Iongh (1892-1985), 1967; transferred to the museum, 1986; on loan to the Rijksmuseum Muiderslot, Muiden, since December 1998

Object number: SK-A-4839

Credit line: Bequeathed by Daniël Crena de Iongh, Wilton, Connecticut

In addition to the fairly complex still lifes and banquet pieces that Pieter Claesz produced in the 1620s there are also several simple and smaller works from the same period with only a few objects, such as a glass, a knife, a small loaf of bread or a lemon. In the 1630s, his compositions became larger, verging on the monumental. They are broadly painted with a limited palette in which greens, browns and white predominate, with just the occasional colour accent.

Around 1635, he began painting tall upright compositions in addition to horizontal ones, and in them the scene is almost always dominated by a large green rummer of wine.⁴⁴Brunner-Bulst 2004a, pp. 238-40, nos. 61, 63, pp. 244-45, nos. 72, 73, pp. 250-52, nos. 83, 84, pp. 256-57, no. 93, pp. 264-65, nos. 103, 104 (ill.).

This breakfast piece on the edge of a table covered with a white tablecloth consists of a small loaf of bread and a piece of salmon, both on pewter plates, a pewter salt-cellar, a knife and the distinctive rummer with the reflection of the studio window. This simple composition is closely related to a number of paintings by Claesz that are dated between 1640 and 1643,⁵⁵See, for example, Brunner-Bulst 2004a, pp. 81, 83, 256-57, no. 93, pp. 264-65, no. 104, pp. 268-69, no. 110, p. 272, no. 117, p. 274, no. 120 (ill.). which makes it likely that this one dates from the same period. There are one or more copies of this work.⁶⁶See Brunner-Bulst 2004a, p. 277; Fred G. Meijer referred us to a copy attributed to W.C. Heda with Gimbels in New York in 1945, and to another one listed as being by C. Kruijs with B. Koetser in London; illustrated in Art News XLVII (September 1945), p. 25 and Apollo LXXXVIII (December 1968), p. cxli, respectively.

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. 45.

Vroom 1945, pp. 29, 48, no. 70; Vroom 1980, I, p. 49, II, pp. 34-35, no. 145; Brunner-Bulst 2004a, p. 277, no. 123, with earlier literature

1992, p. 47, no. A 4839; 2007, no. 45

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Pieter Claesz., Still Life with a Salt, c. 1640 - c. 1645', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200109182