(active in France, mid 17th century)
Still life with a basket of grapes, a bowl of cherries and a silver-gilt columbine on a table,
oil on canvas, 92 x 119 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection Freiherr Kaltschmidt von Eisenberg (according to the seal on the reverse);
Private collection, Bavaria

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for confirming the attribution following first-hand inspection of the original.

The present still life painting is a rare work by François Habert, who was active in France in the mid-seventeenth century. Little is known of the artist’s life except for two early references to him (see M. Faré, Le Grand Siècle de la Nature Morte en France, le XVIIe Siècle, Fribourg, 1974, p. 272 ff). Despite the lack of biographical information, there are a number of signed works by Habert, some dated, which allow us to reconstruct the environment in which he worked (see Faré, op. cit., pp. 271–277). This group includes three large-scale paintings: a monogrammed Breakfast still life (see Faré, op. cit., p. 275), a Basket of flowers and an orange tree, dated 1649 (see Faré, op. cit., pp. 277), and a Basket of fruits with a vase of flowers and a dead hare (dated 1647, sold at Sotheby’s, Monte Carlo, 17 June 1988, lot 878). All three reveal how Habert was influenced by the many Dutch and Flemish still-life artists living in Paris, who brought with them the more sumptuous and decorative style that was to dominate the genre in the second half of the 17th century. His fruit pieces, for example, find inspiration in the works of Jan Fyt and Jan Davidsz. de Heem, while his floral still lifes reveal an awareness of the paintings of Jean-Michel Picart.

In its opulence, the present picture may be considered a pronkstilleven, a type of still life which was developed by Dutch artists such as de Heem, Abraham van Beyern and Willem Kalf, towards the middle of the seventeenth century. Valuable and rare objects, such as the silver-gilt cup and the blue and white porcelain bowls, often feature in works of this kind, and provided artists with the opportunity to demonstrate their technical mastery in rendering a wide range of textures and materials and the play of light across their varied surfaces. Such magnificent displays were, as in the present painting, generally set before a dark background, which only served to intensify the theatricality of their presentation.