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Lot 40
  • 40

Willem Claesz. Heda Haarlem circa 1596 - 1680

Estimate
300,000 - 400,000 GBP
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Description

  • Willem Claesz. Heda
  • A still life with a roemer, a silver tazza, a fluted wine-glass, a mustard jar, a ham and a partly peeled lemon on pewter dishes and a bread roll, all arranged on a table-top draped in white
  • signed and dated lower right: .HEDA. 1642.
  • oil on oak panel

Provenance

Jonkheer Edzard Tjarda van Starkenborch (1859-1936), a lawyer and burgomaster of Groningen, Groningen, by 1909;
Thence by descent to Mrs. C.J. Cheston-Jonkvrouwe Tjarda van Starkenborch;
By whose Estate sold, New York, Christie's, 26 January 2001, lot 16;
With Richard Green, London;
Acquired from the above by the present collector.

Condition

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a fine bevelled oak panel with two joints, one in the lower centre and one quite near the base These have been reglued, with supporting blocks, of the same grain, regularly placed behind. Both the carpentry and the restoration appear comparatively recent, but some of the retouching is now becoming slightly visible, and the filling of the joints is sometimes lumpy. The upper sections of the panel seem always to have been beautifully flat, but there are a few little old losses perhaps from flaking in the upper background, with one narrow scratch and some other little retouchings in the centre above the glass. However both this background and the still life on the table are well preserved and unworn, with the retouching along the central joint quite narrow through the still life. It is however wider on each side of the joint particularly to the right just above the joint. The left edge is retouched where it has been rubbed by the frame, and the lower joint has stretches with rather wide retouching. The lowest panel has been more vulnerable, perhaps to fine flaking along the grain, and this is where there is most retouching almost throughout with some thinness. The white drapery is also fairly thin lower down, with other retouchings in the white pith of the lemon. Nevertheless the upper part of the painting is quite finely preserved. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Catalogue Note

Along with his townsman Pieter Claesz., Willem Claesz. Heda was the foremost painter of the so-called monochrome breakfast-piece that was popularised, notably in Haarlem, in the 17th century. His year of birth is unknown but a Haarlem document of 1627 testifies his age as 'around' thirty-one, thus pointing to a birth date circa 1596. His earliest dated monochrome breakfast-piece is from 1629 and from this date on he painted little else.1  His name appears in the Haarlem guild records for the first time in 1631 and he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke in 1637, the same year he admitted the first pupils to his workshop, which were to include his son Gerret and Maarten Boelema de Stomme.

A still life by Boelema from 1642, in a private collection in Denmark, is clearly inspired in composition by this work and indeed depicts the same ham and the same tazza, although placed on its side.2  The tazza appears for the first time in Heda's afore-mentioned 1629 panel. As this would suggest, Heda's studio props recur frequently in both his students' and his own oeuvre: the mustard jar can be seen in a painting of 1643 sold in these Rooms, 16 December 1999, lot 41; after this there is no further trace of it and it seems to have been replaced by a more ornate example. Equally, the large roemer and fluted wine-glass re-occur frequently although, as more common objects, it is difficult to identify them with absolute certainty. Although his subject matter was limited Heda often added, as he does here, both a dynamic tension and greater depth to his still lifes by positioning one or two plates precariously over the edge of the table. He produced his finest paintings during the 1630s and 1640s, after which his skill declined and no securely datable work survives beyond 1665.

1  The 1629 panel is in The Hague, Mauritshuis, inv. no. 596; see H.R. Hoetink (ed.), The Royal Picture Gallery. Mauritshuis, New York/ The Hague 1985, pp. 198-99, no. 40, reproduced.
2  See N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message, Scheidam 1980, p. 11, cat. no. 16.