Oude Schilderkunst, Utrecht, 1894
La Hollande en Fleurs, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg, 18 June – 10 July 1949, no. 6.
Dordrechts Museum, Dordrechts, Boom, Bloem en Plant, 1955, no. 21.
Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, Ghent, Fleurs et Jardins dans l’Art Flamand, 10 – 26 April 1960.
H. Terry-Engell Gallery, London, Fifteen important Old Masters, No. III, 1967-68. 

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger was born into a family of flower painters.  The eldest son and namesake of the celebrated flower painter Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621), Ambrosius the Younger followed closely in the footsteps of his father.  His uncle Balthasar van der Ast (1593/4-1657), a pupil of Bosschaert the Elder, likewise specialised in flower painting, as did his two younger brothers, Johannes (c. 1610/11-1628 or later) and Abraham (1612/13-1643).

Ambrosius began his training with his father, and although he was only twelve when his father died, he had already learnt a great deal from him.  He no doubt also profited from the study of his late father’s paintings as is evident from his early still lifes whose style and composition adhere closely to those of his father.  Later, he completed his training with his uncle Balthasar van der Ast, who strongly influenced his stylistic evolution.  Despite this weighty legacy, Ambrosius gradually found his own voice and evolved a more independent manner. 

Initially, Ambrosius the Younger signed his work using his father’s monogram, AB, in Roman capital letters, but around 1631 to 1632, he began to develop more personal forms of signature, signing his work either A. Bosschaert, or in full, using a calligraphic script with a Baroque flourish. His work was often confused with that of other family members until 1935 when Piet de Boer succeeded in distinguishing his oeuvre from that of his father and younger brother Abraham.  In 1960, Laurens Bol produced an oeuvre-catalogue for all three brothers[i], which reveals that Ambrosius’s oeuvre is more extensive and varied than either of his brothers.  Bol’s catalogue also shows that although Ambrosius the Younger painted mainly flower pieces, he also produced still lifes of fruit and a few that include both fruit and flowers. 

This enchanting floral still life of 1632, one of the last signed with the AB monogram, exemplifies Ambrosius the Younger’s work from his first period of creative activity.  A small, compact bouquet, comprising pink and red roses, tulips, aquilegia, cyclamen, wallflowers, a pansy and apple blossom, is arranged in a simple glass vase standing on a grey ledge.  A fly, two fallen petals and a droplet of water appear beside the vase.  Like his father’s floral compositions, the flowers are deployed along a central axis surmounted by a single large bloom.  The bouquet is evenly lit and each blossom is rendered with great clarity.  The same globular vase appears repeatedly in the artist’s early paintings.  Here, a reflection of the studio window is captured in its smooth, convex surface, while light passing through the translucent glass from the left to right picks out the flowers’ stems and throws a pool of refracted light onto the ledge beside the vase. 

In this still life, Bosschaert selected a small number of spring and early summer flowers in closely harmonised shades of pink, red, pale yellow and white.  Although he depicted each flower with great attention to botanical accuracy, no such bouquet could have existed in reality since the flowers do not all bloom at the same time.  Thus, Bosschaert must have followed the normal practice of his day and worked from preparatory drawings of individual specimens made from life.

With his paintings of floral bouquets, Ambrosius continued the tradition of flower painting established by his father.  As he matured, his compositions became more elaborate and his lines more sinuous.  At the same time, his arrangements became looser and more spacious.  Like both his brothers, he died young at the age of thirty-six leaving only a small oeuvre. 

BIOGRAPHY

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger belonged to a dynasty of flower painters.  Baptised at Arnemuiden, near Middleburg, the capital of Zeeland, on 1 March 1609[ii], he was the eldest son of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621) the founder of the dynasty, and his wife Maria van der Ast.  Two younger sons, Johannes (c. 1610/11-1628 or later) and Abraham (1612/13-1643), also became flower painters, and a daughter, Maria, was married in 1627 to the painter Jeronymus Sweerts (1603-1636), son of the botanist, nurseryman, draughtsman and engraver Emanuel Sweerts (1552-1612).  In addition to their own children, Maria van der Ast’s much younger brother Balthasar van der Ast (1593/4-1657) joined the Bosschaert household in 1609 when his father died and became a pupil of Bosschaert the Elder. 

In 1616, the Bosschaert family moved first to Utrecht, and then, in 1619, to Breda.  Ambrosius the Younger began his artistic education with his father, but in 1621, the elder Bosschaert was suddenly taken ill and died while visiting The Hague.  Following his death, his sons were most probably sent from Breda to Utrecht to continue their training with their uncle Balthasar van der Ast. 

In 1634, Bosschaert the Younger married a local girl, Maria Streus, in Utrecht.  Their marriage contract, drawn up on 6 January of that year, bears the signatures not only of his close family members, including his father’s widow Maria van der Ast, and his younger brother Abraham (1612/13-1643), but also that of his Best Man Roelandt Savery (1578-1639), another of the great pioneers of Dutch flower painting.  Ambrosius the Younger died prematurely, aged only thirty-six, and was buried in the Catharijnen Church on 19May 1645, leaving behind a wife and a son, also called Ambrosius.  When his widow remarried, she insisted that all her late husband’s painting utensils be kept for her son, including ‘some 200 models on paper, both large and small”.  However, the son chose not to follow his father’s and grandfather’s profession, but instead pursued a career in local government[iii].