Basle, Kunstverein, 15 April to 28 May 1928
London, Royal Academy of Art, 1929, cat. no. 175. 

An artfully arranged group of still-life objects appears on a stone-topped table, draped with a crumpled cloth.  Placed somewhat precariously on the corner of the table is a silver platter, bearing a large roemer, half filled with white wine, a prawn, an oyster, a segment of lemon and an orange.   Immediately behind is a large truss of green grapes, and standing tall at the back of the table is a façon de Venise wine goblet, with an elaborately fashioned stem and finial.   An oyster barrel appears on the right, and resting on the table in front of it are oysters, a bread roll, a lemon, and a half-peeled lemon, from which hangs a spiral of peel.  The knife used to open some of the shellfish has been stuck into the metal rim of the barrel.  A diagonal shaft of light falling from above plays across the varied surfaces of the objects capturing the sheen of silver, the sparkle of glass and the moist succulence of the oyster bodies.  The artist has rendered the whole using a carefully controlled palette of  green, golden brown and grey tones, with just a few touches of gleaming white and brighter colour in the citrus fruits and the prawn.   The nearly square canvas is a format that van Beyeren favoured. 

Abraham van Beyeren was born in The Hague around 1621.  He was mostly active in his native city, although he moved about often, living at various times in Leiden, Delft, Amsterdam, Alkmaar and finally Overschie, where he died in 1690.  Primarily a painter of still lifes, van Beyeren started out as a painter of seascapes and river views.  His broad, flowing brushwork and liquid touch give his work a distinctive character and sets him apart from most of the still-life painters of his day, who inclined towards a smoother, more precise manner.   This looseness of style may explain why his works commanded relatively low prices during his lifetime, for it was generally the case in the seventeenth century that the more detailed and polished the execution of a painting, the higher its value.  Probably as a consequence, van Beyeren often struggled to make ends meet and may have been forced to adopt an itinerant lifestyle in order to escape from his creditors.  Today, he is considered one of the greatest seventeenth-century Dutch still-life painters and it is his very directness and spontaneity that particularly appeals to modern tastes.     

Van Beyeren was a highly accomplished and versatile still-life painter.  Although he is probably best known for his large and sumptuous (pronk) still lifes featuring banquet tables laden with an abundance of luxury items, he also painted more modest banquets and breakfast pieces, as well as still lifes of fruit, flowers and fish.  Van Beyeren almost always signed his paintings with his monogram AVB f., but only dated his works occasionally, making it difficult to establish a reliable chronology for his oeuvre. 

Van Beyeren probably began to paint banquet pieces in the second half of the 1640s, although no dated examples are known before 1652.  In this still life, the artist depicted a relatively modest group of elegant tableware, fruit and shellfish.   Whilst the Venetian-style drinking vessel, the large roemer and the silver platter are typical of the costly items that feature in van Beyeren’s pronk still lives, the oyster barrel and the shucking knife are everyday objects that one might expect to find in a kitchen or fish still life.   Some of the objects depicted here recur in different arrangements in other still lifes by van Beyeren, most notably the tall richly ornamented façon de Venise glass, which is a key piece in a number of his paintings dating from the mid-1650s.  These include a sumptuous still life of 1654 in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in Rotterdam [i], a large still life with a lobster, dated 1653, in the Alte Pinakothek, in Munich [ii], and a banquet piece in The Worcester Art Museum, dated 1655 [iii].  In view of the relatively modest subject matter here and the somewhat muted palette, it seems likely that this painting predates the above mentioned examples.   

BIOGRAPHY 

Son of the glazier Hendrick Gillisz van Beyeren, Abraham van Beyeren was born in The Hague in 1620/21.  He is first documented in 1636, when his name is mentioned as the 16-year-old pupil of Tymen Cracht, an otherwise unknown artist.  Shortly afterwards he moved to Leiden, where in 1639, he married Emmerentia Sterck, a girl from The Hague.  The couple had three daughters.  In 1640, he was back in The Hague, where he registered in the local painters’ guild.  The first indications of the financial woes that were to plague him for much of his life occurred in 1646/47, when some of his furniture and a few dozen of his pictures were sold at auction in order to settle his debts.   In 1647, after the death of his first wife, van Beyeren married Anna van de Queborn (who also trained as a painter but by whom no paintings are known today), daughter of the printmaker and painter Crispijn van den Queborn (1604-1652) and granddaughter of The Hague court artist Daniel van den Queborn (1552/57-1602/05).  He thus became related to the fish painter Pieter de Putter (c. 1600-1659), who was married to one of Anna’s aunts.  In 1649, he was commissioned, possibly in collaboration with another painter, by the guild of fishermen in Maassluis to paint a large votive panel featuring figures, seascapes, fish and shells for the Groote Kerk (still in situ) in the town.  Van Beyeren was one of the founder members of the Confrérie Pictura, the artists’ society established in The Hague in 1656, but the following year, he moved to Delft, probably to escape his many creditors, and registered with the city’s Guild of St. Luke.  In 1663, he returned to The Hague and remained there until about 1668, when another auction of works was held to pay off his debts.  From 1669 to 1674, he was active in Amsterdam, in 1674, he was in Alkmaar, and from 1675 to 1677 in Gouda.  During the last 13 years of his life, he lived in Overschie, near Rotterdam.  His financial situation remained precarious, and in 1689, he auctioned another 54 paintings.  He probably died in early 1690: a probate inventory of his possessions was drawn up on 15 March 1690 [iv].   

Son of the glazier Hendrick Gillisz. van Beyeren, Abraham was born in The Hague in 1620/21 and enrolled in the guild there in 1636 as a pupil of Tyman Cracht.  Shortly afterwards he moved to Leiden, where in 1639 he married Emmerantia Stercke, a girl from The Hague.  In 1640, he returned to The Hague and rejoined the local guild.  After the death of his first wife, he married Anna van den Queborn, a niece of the fish painter Pieter de Putter (before 1600-59) in 1647.  In 1656, he was a founding member of the Confrerie Pictura in The Hague, but the following year he moved to Delft and joined the guild there.  He returned to The Hague in 1663, moved to Amsterdam in 1668 and then to Alkmaar, where he joined the local guild in 1674.  He lived in Gouda in 1675 and in Overschie from 1677 until his death in 1690.