LOT DETAILS

Materials:

oil on oak panel

Size Notes:

34.7 x 23.6 cm.; 13?? x 9 in.

Edition:

In this work, probably dating from the early 1630s, Van der Ast has arranged a mixed bouquet of tulips, hyacinth, iris and other flowers, surmounted by a double white narcissus, in a dark-ribbed vase of a type he used in a few other paintings. The prominent shell to the right resting on the ledge is a Devil's Claw (Ptocera lambis L), found in the seas around Indonesia, where ships of the Dutch East-India Company were already trading and establishing trading posts around the island of Java by Van der Ast's day. A similar shell occurs in Van der Ast's shell-piece in the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam.1 Van der Ast made a watercolour drawing of this or a very similar shell in an album in the Lugt Collection in Paris, which he monogrammed and inscribed: Cleijen Geelghepleckte Crab.2

Description:

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Markings:

signed lower left: B.V.Ast