In the possession of the present family since circa 1940. 

Jan Davidsz. de Heem's earliest work dates from 1626, when he was twenty, and it was around this time that he moved from Utrecht, where he was born in 1606, to Leiden. De Heem's earliest still lifes betray the unmistakable influence of Balthasar van der Ast who was in Utrecht from 1619 to 1632. It seems very likely, if not certain, that the young De Heem underwent some sort of training in his Utrecht workshop, given that his earliest known paintings, from 1626-28, are conceived wholly in the Van der Ast tradition and have indeed often been mistaken for the elder artist's work. His last still life painted in Van der Ast's style is from 1628 (private collection, London) and it is a painting that is inconceivable without prior knowledge of, for example, Van der Ast's 1623 Still life with Parrots (Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst).

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for proposing the attribution to Jan Davidsz. de Heem, based on photographs, and for suggesting a date of circa 1627-1628.