(Delft 1627 – after 1686 Amsterdam)
A still life of fruit with a gilt tazza,
indistinctly signed centre right: G VAelst,
oil on canvas, 64 x 79 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection Baron van Zuylen van Nyeveld, France;
sale, Ader, Picard, Tajan, Paris, 29 June 1989, lot 59;
with Galerie Jean-Francois Heim, Paris;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 28 January 1999;
sale, Wilfrid Cazo, Paris, 26 June 2008, lot 58;
with Scheidwimmer, Munich;
Private European collection

The present painting by Willem van Aelst is registered in the database of the RKD under no. 39843. The present work can be dated to the time after 1659 when the artist changed his initial W to G for Guillmo, an Italian version of his Christian name.

In Lexikon der holländischen Stilllebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert (E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Lingen 1995, pp. 11-12), the entry on the painter reads as follows: “Willem van Aelst is considered a masterful painter of still lifes of the second half of the seventeenth century. His pictures are characterised by a subtle rendering of the forms, colours, and materials of objects. His elegant compositions are often bathed in a silvery light […]. In his still lifes of fruit, Willem van Aelst mostly combined grapes and peaches, several glasses, a silver ewer, a twisted stand, and a nautilus goblet. Van Aelst succeeded in uniting all of the objects of a painting within a lively and yet balanced pictorial ornament that is based on a curved C or auricular shape.” Among the students of Willem van Aelst were the highly successful painters Rachel Ruysch, Maria van Oosterwyck, and Ernst Stuven.