Old Masters Day Auction
Old Masters Day Auction
Still-life Paintings from the Collection of Dr Sam Segal
Osias Beert the Elder
Still life with oysters, fruit and glasses on a table
Lot Closed
July 7, 01:12 PM GMT
Estimate
70,000 - 100,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Still-life Paintings from the Collection of Dr Sam Segal
Osias Beert the Elder
Antwerp c. 1580 - 1624 Antwerp
Still life with oysters, fruit and glasses on a table
oil on oak panel, unframed
52.5 x 79.3 cm.; 20½ x 31¼ in.
Adi Huber Collection, Hailer, in 1980;
With Piet de Boer, Amsterdam, 2010–11;
Private collection, The Netherlands;
Thence by descent to the present owners.
S. Segal, ‘Früchte, Brot und Wein und tiefere Bedeutung’, in Kunst und Antiquitäten, vol. 2, 1986, pp. 23–24, fig. 6 reproduced.
Osias Beert, a contemporary of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, was registered as a pupil in the Antwerp painters' guild in 1596 and enrolled as a master in 1602. Beert was a pioneer 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. Only a dozen signed or monogrammed still lifes by Beert have been recorded out of a total of fifty or so fully attributed works. Approximately half of his known œuvre is made up of flower pieces and still lifes, while the other half consists of still lifes displaying fruit, oysters and other food stuffs, often arranged in expensive and luxurious containers.
Dated to about 1615 by Dr Fred Meijer, this carefully arranged still life of oysters, fruits, berries and nuts is comparable to another that sold at Sotheby's, New York, 28 January 2010.1 Comparisons have also been suggested with a signed painting by Beert in the Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, Brussels, which contains a still life with oysters and glasses.2
1 Sold for $338,500; https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2010/important-old-master-paintings-and-sculpture-n08610/lot.191.html