Workshop of Jan Brueghel the Younger

(Antwerp 1601-1678)

Parrot tulips, irises, carnations and other flowers in a glass beaker on a wooden table-top with a sprig of rosemary, insects and a shell

Footnotes

Provenance
Private Collection, Channel Islands

A version of the present composition, oil on copper, 31.1 x 22.9 cm. is in the Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, which has been attributed alternatively to Peter Binoit and Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (see fig. 1). It differs in the colouring of the flowers far left and lower right, in the depiction of the ledge and in the objects and insects on the ledge. A further version of this composition, but with a tulip lying on the left, rather than a sprig of rosemary, was with John Mitchell Fine Paintings, London, July 2015.

These compositions display a knowledge of the works of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Jan the Younger: the iris upper left, the tulip upper right and the white rose in the lower part of the present composition are broadly taken from the Elder Brueghel's Flowers in a Glass Vase (formerly with David Koetser, Zurich; see: K. Ertz, Jan Brueghel Der Altere (1568-1625), Cologne, 1979, kat. 181, p. 275); while the iris upper centre, the lower white rose and the narcissus lower right are found in Jan Brueghel the Younger's Flowers in a Glass Vase from the Ward Collection in the Ashmoleum Museum (on panel, 47 x 35 cm.; Klaus Ertz, Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601-1678), Freren, 1984, no. 277, pp. 441-442). The latter is a free copy of his father's aforementioned still life which is believed to have been produced before the son's Italian journey, circa 1620.