(Arnemuiden 1609–1645 Utrecht)
A basket with fruit, shells, a lizard and insects on a stone table top,
signed with a monogram and dated lower left: AB fecit 1630,
oil on panel, 37.5 x 49.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Switzerland;
sale, Koller, Zurich, 21 September 2007, lot 3029;
where acquired by the present owner

The present painting is listed in the RKD database under no. 196628.

A comparable painting with an identical monogram and dated 1631 was sold at Christie’s, London, 12 November 1992, lot 67.

Fred Meijer confirmed the present painting as an authentic work by the younger Ambrosius Bosschaert. He sees it as an important work in the artist’s rather small oeuvre.

The present scene of natural abundance, heaped with exotic shells, lizards, insects, and imported fruits is a characteristically luxuriant and masterfully rendered work from the hand of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger, one of the most accomplished still-life painters of the Dutch Golden Age. The weathered stone plinth, signed by the artist in the form of a monogram lower left, adds a sense of timeless monumentality to the work, and indeed such a cornucopia, would not have occurred naturally with the different growing seasons, and habitats of the fauna and fruit therein. Bosschaert was instrumental in the development of still-life painting in the Netherlands as a genre in its own right, basing the shells and insects in the present composition on meticulous preparatory drawings.

The port of Middleburg, where Bosschaert began his artistic career, and where he executed a large proportion of his works, sat on the trade routes to the East Indies and the Americas. Bosschaert’s activity there, contemporaneous with the dawning of the Golden Age of Dutch Science, complimented the academic life of the city as important centre for the study of exotic imports and new phenomena. In the present picture this can be seen in the carefully observed poise and colouring of the lizard, and is exemplified still more by the black and white sea snail shell, or Conus marmoreus from the Indian Ocean, in keeping with the humanistic fascination with the natural world first engaged with in the North by Erasmus of Rotterdam a century or so earlier.

Bosschaert had three sons who all succeeded him in becoming still-life painters. In addition, his brother-in-law Balthasar van der Ast (1593–1657) also lived with him and ran his workshop in Utrecht and later Breda, constituting a renowned artistic dynasty whose works are among the most memorable paintings of the Gouden Eeuw.