With Galerie Guy Stein, Paris, 1939;
With Noortman Master Paintings, Maastricht, 2005;
From whom purcha🔴sed ℱby the present collector. 

Paris, Galerie Guy Stein, Natures Mortes des 17^e et 18^e siècles, 15 May - 3 June 1939, no. 5^bis. reproduced.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This beautiful painting on panel has probably been recently restored. The panel is un-reinforced on the reverse and seems to be painted on a single piece of oak as we are unable to detect any joins on the front or the reverse. The panel is slightly curved in the corners but does not seem to be actively unstable or curving any further. Under ultraviolet light one can detect isolated restoration in the oysters on the left of this group of shellfish, where paint loss has presumably occurred in the past. There is also retouching in the top two oysters on the right side addressing old paint loss. In the remainder of the objects on the table, it seems that only the plums at the rear of the arrangement have received any significant retouching, probably to address some thinness in the more transparent colors. A similar approach has been taken by the restorer in the nuts in the back right. Clearly, at some point in this painting's history there was some paint loss which has since been beautifully consolidated and restored. In addition, the background has received fairly consistent restoration in the upper right, in particular. There is no reason to believe that this restoration is exaggerated or unnecessary and it is certainly very diligently applied. The picture should be hung as is.
"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."

Osias Beert, a comtemporary of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, was registered as a pupil in the Antwerp painter's guild in 1596 and enrolled as a master in 1602.  Beert was on of the pioneers of still-life painting in Antwerp and a highly-esteemed artist, as evidenced by the large number of contemporary copies and imitations of his work.  Today, roughly only a dozen signed or monogrammed still lifes by Beert are known, and his extant body of work includes only around fifty firmly attributed works.  Approximately half of his known oeuvre is made up of flower pieces and still lifes including bouquets, while the other half consists of still lifes displaying fruit, oysters and other food stuffs, often displaying in expensive and luxurious containers. 

Although the flower pieces are by their nature more variegated, in Beert's still lifes of food, earth colors, balanced by cool blues and grays and strengthened by red, yellow and green accents often predominate.  Beert accomplished the brightness and subtle detail in his works by the application of glazes on a light ground, while details were often rendered with fine, linear accents.  Typically, in larger works there are also elements that have been handled in a more painterly fashion, particularly items in the background, such as the chestnuts and dried fruit in the present work.  Although over time and through cleaning the loss of the topmost layers of glaze is not uncommon, in the present panel they have been remarkably well preserved, allowing for a close study of Beert's method. 

Beert often repeated motifs and in some cases larger compositional elements in his works.  Dishes of Chinese Wan-li porcelain with fruit are a recurring feature in many of his still lifes of this type.  Such porcelain was imported by the East-India trade companies and got its popular name of "Kraak" from early examples that were salvaged from a captured Portugese trade ship known as a "cararcas."  At the time that Beert painted this still life, in the early 17^th century, such dishes and bowls were still rare and expensive.  The pewter dishes that are depicted were locally made and therefore more common and less expensive.  Likewise, the Venetian-style wine glass was most likely produced in one of the glass studios in Liège or Antwerp, rather than imported from Venice.  In his choice of fruits and vegetables, he has here depicted only the produce that was available locally, avoiding such exotic fruits as the lemon or orange.  The delicate white butterfly in the immediate center foreground also appears in a number of Beert's still lifes, including the slightly earlier work that was sold in Amsterdam, Christie's 11 May 1994, lot 164.  This work also shares other similarities to the present painting, including the same Wan-li bowl, similar arrangements of fruit and the same wineglass.  That both were painted on large, high-quality oak panels with no joins is indicative of importance and quality of the still lifes he painted on them. 

A somewhat less elaborate version of the present painting was on the art market in 2003; however, its quality and execution are inferior to the present work, indicating the likely participation of the studio (Vienna, Dorotheum, 1 October 2003, lot 113).  Although it is difficult to accurately place Beert's still lifes because of the lack of dated examples, Fred Meijer has suggested that it probably dates to the second half of the 1610s, based on its somewhat more painterly execution. 

This catalogue note is based on a report by Fred J. Meijer of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague.