Still Life with Flowers and Insects
Artist/Maker
DatesMade: Made 1620s
Material / Technique
Dimensionsh x w: Mått 73 x 59 cm h x w x d: Ram 93 x 76 x 8 cm
Inventory numberNM 1099
AcqusitionPurchase 1870
Other titlesTitle (sv): Stilleben med blomstervas och insekter Title (en): Still Life with Flowers and Insects Previous: Still Life with Flowers in a Sculpted Jar
DescriptionDescription: Jan Brueghel, “Flower Brueghel”, was from a famous family of artists and was just one year old when his father, peasant painter Pieter the Elder, died. Jan was first taught by his maternal grandmother, miniaturist Mayken Verhulst. This is seen in his many floral still lifes imbued with detailed realism but also free grouping of many flowers. They were based on studies from the different seasons of the year that he repeated in various still lifes. Catalogue raisonné: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 40: Technical notes: The painting’s support is a slightly convex oak panel (±1.0–1.7 cm thick) constructed of a single radial board with vertical grain. Partial bevelling occurs along the bottom edge. The panel has been thinned; exposed worm tunnels are visible on the back, as well as a few worm holes and splintered wood along the right edge. A repair in the form of a triangular piece of wood has been inserted at the lower left corner and a small piece of wood is missing at upper right. There is a partial unpainted border at the upper edge near centre. Dendrochronological examination and analysis have determined a felling date for the tree between c. 1604 and 1620. The wood originates from the region of Western Germany/the Netherlands. Under the assumption of a median of 17 sapwood rings and a minimum of 2 years for seasoning of the wood, the most plausible date for use of the panel would be 1616 or later. The preparatory layers consist of a brush-applied, offwhite ground, probably chalk, followed by an extremely thin, semi-transparent, cool grey imprimatura applied with a broad, flat brush in diagonal strokes, resulting in a “streaky” appearance. Infrared reflectography revealed extensive underdrawing in the larger flowers and stems and, partially, in the ornamentations of the terracotta jar. The shapes of the leaves and of the flowers in the jar were then boldly outlined with just a few thin strokes of black paint on the light grey ground. Next, the artist painted the dark background, reserving the shape of the principal blooms; the other flowers were all painted over the dark background paint. The flowers are painted with a full brush, the contours partially reinforced by the pressing-on of soft impasto paint. The brushwork is quite loose and follows the direction in which the organic forms flow. The large iris at the upper left shows the filigree work with the brushtip. Typically, Brueghel allowed his nervous, apparently rapid brushstrokes to stand out naked on the surface. The paint for the flowers is applied in vivid brushwork with a swift, almost nervous touch, giving an air of liveliness and directness. An old but only slightly discoloured layer of varnish is present. The painting underwent conservation treatment in 1936, 1963, 1974, 1978 and 1982. Exhibited: Stockholm 1977, no. 69 (as Jan Brueghel I); Stockholm 1995, no. 139; Stockholm 2007, no. 40, colour pl. on p. 79 (as Jan Brueghel I); Stockholm 2010, no. 51. Bibliography: NM Cat. 1885, p. 26 (as Jan Brueghel I); Göthe 1887, p. 35 (as Jan Brueghel I); Göthe 1893, pp. 43–44; Granberg 1911–1913, II, p. 4 (as Jan Brueghel I); NM Cat. 1958, p. 30 (as Jan Brueghel I); Hairs 1965, pp. 65, 366, n. 155 (as Jan Brueghel I); Díaz Padrón 1975, pp. 220, 222 (as Jan Breughel II); Ertz 1979, pp. 288, 531 n. 371, 593 under cat. no. 209 (as copy after Jan Brueghel I); Ertz 1984, cat. no. 273 (as Jan Breughel II); Hairs 1985, pp. 86, 430 n. 315 (as Jan Brueghel I); Grimm 1989–1990, p. 38, figs. 4, 5 (as Jan Brueghel I); NM Cat. 1990, p. 56 (as Jan Brueghel I); Brenninkmeijer- de Rooij 1990, pp. 243–244, 248 (as Jan Brueghel I); Brenninkmeijer-de Rooij 1996, pp. 76, 83, fig. 75; Vienna 2002, p. 38 under no. 3 [K. Ertz]; Van der Willigen and Meijer 2003, p. 55 (as Jan Brueghel II). On a wooden table, before a dark background, stands an Italian glazed terracotta jar with relief decorations holding an impressive bouquet of flowers, dense and artfully arranged. The bouquet, seen obliquely from above, can be roughly divided into three sections: at the bottom are smaller flowers, like sprays of forgetme- nots, wild pansies, marigolds, pheasant’s eye, and pink, white and red roses; slightly larger tulips, garden anemones and irises are at the centre; a Chalcedonian lily, star lilies, blue irises, daffodils and tobacco crown the arrangement. Tiny drops of water or dew on the stalks indicate the freshness of recently cut flowers. The composition is built up along a central axis in a completely natural and unforced manner. Small and large flowers alternate and depth is suggested both by the use of shadow and by the curvature of the flower stalks. On the flowers, partly hidden, are a multitude of insects: caterpillars, beetles, butterflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies, bees, flies and tiny snails. On the table are displayed a stag-beetle, a large grasshopper (?), a moth, a ladybug, two snails and a twig of wild roses. The light seems to come from the front, for every flower stands out brightly. The vase, however, casts a faint shadow towards the right. Jan Brueghel I belongs to the first generation of flower painters in the Netherlands and although his forays into flower painting were relatively infrequent, he must be regarded as an important innovator of the genre. Brueghel painted his first flower piece for Cardinal Federico Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, in 1606,1 and soon acquired a reputation as a painter of meticulously executed and tastefully arranged flower still lifes that were highly valued by his princely and aristocratic patrons. Jan’s earliest known flower pieces are essentially decorative and linear in conception, but the static symmetry of his earlier works gradually makes way, after 1610, for a looser arrangement, which reinforces the impression of being true to life. His careful painting technique, characterized by fine stippled brush strokes and subtle gradations of colour, enabled him to give a great impression of tactility to the individual flowers, their stems and foliage. The individual flowers of the present painting are painted with near scientific accuracy, there is only slight overlap and a few specimens are shown from several different angles. And yet, this painted bouquet is, as a whole, purely imaginary. Since Brueghel’s bouquets – like those of contemporary flower painters such as Ambrosius Bosschaert I and Balthasar van der Ast – are composed of flowers that blossom in different seasons, it has generally been assumed that he did not paint his flower pieces from life, i.e. after an actual bouquet that served as a model in the studio. Some interesting conclusions about the way Brueghel produced his flower pieces may be drawn from the artist’s correspondence with his Milanese patron, Cardinal Borromeo and his agent Ercole Bianchi.2 In 1606 Bruehgel informs Borromeo that the painting he is then working on is done entirely after life – “fatta tutti del naturel”.3 Five years later, in 1611, in a famous letter to Bianchi,4 he proudly states that he paints his flowers “alla prima”, without making any preliminary drawings (“desseigni”) or oil sketches (“boitssaturo”) and that he composes his bouquets during the painting process. He emphasizes how difficult (“fastidioso”) it is to paint his bouquets because all the interesting flowers are only in bloom during four months, from April to August, again implying that he paints his flowers from life. Although the process of painting such flower pieces was a slow one, he further writes that he declines all workshop assistance. Yet, flowers sometimes recur in Brueghel’s work, suggesting that individual flowers were depicted in oil or watercolour studies that were part of the studio’s stock-in-trade and were used repeatedly.5 In addition, Brenninkmeijer- de Rooij showed that, rather than painting every flower from life in his studio or garden, in certain paintings Brueghel copied flowers from his own paintings or from botanical prints.6 That he did not work exclusively from nature is also indicated by the complete underdrawing revealed by infrared reflectography in the present painting (see Technical Notes) and in a Cambridge flower piece (Fitzwilliam Museum) examined in 1986.7 The artist’s principal aim would have been to describe prized flowers accurately and create a plausible illusion of a bouquet, a trompe-l’oeil effect. Besides the beauty of these rare specimens, contemporary observers would no doubt also have been aware of their transience, of the familiar metaphor of flowers representing the brevity of human existence: “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth” (Ps.103:15). Even without overt symbols, vanitas associations are always present as a subtext, in the present painting reinforced by the broken-off rose twig, the moth and beetles on the table.8 The fly, or any other insect with a short life span, like the mayfly or the dragonfly, were used as emblems of transience; the butterfly was used to represent the resurrection of the body after the Last Judgment. Individual flowers also had specific connotations: the rose, the lily, the iris and the violet, for example, had Marian associations, while the opium poppy had connotations of sleep and death. The present bouquet being displayed in a glazed terracotta jar with relief decorations of the goddess Diana accompanied by a satyr playing his pipe, set amidst the curling leaves of a grapevine, per- haps represents a call to abandon lechery in anticipation of death? At the same time, the painted bouquet served as a reminder, when the richness of the natural world had passed – naturalistically painted fruits and flowers were considered acceptable as substitutes for the real objects when, especially in wintertime, they were unavailable.9 The painted flowers would never wither, fade and die: their beauties were permanent. Very few of Brueghel’s flower pieces, especially his large masterpieces of the early 1620s, are either signed or dated and numerous replicas and variants exist. Jan was an extremely successful artist and, although his autograph still life production must have been relatively small, as is clear from the sources, he had a studio that included his gifted son, Jan II, who adopted and mimicked his father’s style and maintained the studio long after his father’s death in 1625.10 A quick glance at the literature mentioning the present painting clearly demonstrates the problem of its attribution. Hairs (1965, 1985), Grimm (1989) and Brenninkmeijer- de Rooij (1990, 1996), all accepted the painting as an autograph work of Jan Brueghel I. According to Grimm (1989), the painting displays “the relaxed hand of the master himself”, and it is “probably the most outstanding witness to his mature style”. Ertz (1984), on the contrary, argued that what he viewed as the lesser quality of the execution of the present painting made an attribution to Jan I unlikely, even though the design is his. He instead suggested an attribution to Jan II for the painting, assuming it to be a later work, painted sometime during the 1630s. The present painting belongs to a group of related flower pieces which share a similar type of Italian glazed terracotta jar.11 The painting is a variant version of the large Bouquet of Lilies of c. 1620 at Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten), which Ertz finally regarded as a collaborative work of father and son, painted before the latter’s Italian sojourn (1622–1625).12 Like the Antwerp still life, it is closely related to one of Jan I’s later bouquets in a sculpted terracotta jar, a painting in Berlin (Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie).13 The composition of the Stockholm painting – in which flowers and clusters of flowerets alternate in the usual manner – belongs to the same family and certain groups of flowers, such as the group of three tulips at the upper centre right, are repeated after the Antwerp bouquet or its source.14 The dendrochronological examination of the panel (see Technical Notes) does not provide a definite clue as to its authorship: the panel was cut sometime between c. 1604 and 1620, making an attribution to either of the two artists equally plausible. However, the botanical accuracy of this floral still life, the generally freer, less graphic, rendering of most details and the high quality in the rendering of the jar, seem to confirm that this is, indeed, a work of Jan Brueghel I. CF 1 Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, inv. no. 66; for which see Ertz 1979, cat. no. 143, fig. 327. 2 See Jones 1988; Brenninkmeyer-de Rooij 1990, pp. 233–235, and idem 1996. Brueghel’s correspondence was first published by Crivelli 1868. 3 In a letter of 14 April 1606 to Cardinal Borromeo concerning his first flower piece, Brueghel reports that he had to travel from Antwerp to Brussels in order to paint “del natural”, from nature, some rare specimens that could only be seen in the gardens of the archducal palace. See Crivelli 1868, p. 63f. , cited after Jones 1988, p. 268. 4 For the letter to Ercole Bianchi of 22 April 1611, see Crivelli 1868, p. 168. Cf. a painting showing Pictura in a Painter’s Studio (priv. coll.), attributed to Jan Brueghel or a follower; see Brennnkmeijer-de Rooij 1996, fig. 53. 5 There is a near lack of extant flowers studies by Brueghel: only one compositional sketch of a floral still life with a tazza (pen and brown ink, brown wash, watercolour, 279 x 375 mm, London, The British Museum) and one plant study are known. For the London sketch see Winner 1961, p. 237, fig. 47. 6 See Brenninkmeijer-de Rooij 1990, pp. 233–235 and idem 1996, pp. 66–67. 7 See S. Murray and K. Groen, “Four early Dutch flower paintings examined”, Bulletin of the Hamilton Kerr Institute 2, 1990; and Brenninkmeijerde Rooij 1990, pp. 233–234, figs. 17, 22. 8 But cf. Brenninkmeijer -De Rooij 1990, pp. 236–237. 9 Cardinal Borromeo’s autobiographical notes, written in 1628, reveal that Brueghel’s flower piece was destined to hang in his study, where he liked to have vases on the tables. He was particularly fond of looking at it in the winter, taking pleasure in the varied colours which did not alter or fade like those of real flowers: “...when I am in my study and it is hot, flowers are pleasing to me and some fruit on the tables. And I have enjoyed most of all having the fruits of spring and the flowers of it and still in the summer – according to the diversities of the weather – [I have enjoyed] having various vases in the room, and varying those according to opportunity, and according to my pleasure. Then when winter encumbers and restricts everything with ice, I have enjoyed from sight – and even imagined odour, if not real – fake flowers...expressed in painting...and in these flowers I have wanted to see the variety of colours, not fleeting, as some of the flowers that are found [in nature], but stable and very endurable”. See Borromeo, Pro suis studiis, fols. 254v–255r, cited after Jones 1988, p. 269. 10 See Ertz 1984, 71 ff., cat.nos. 264–291. The diary kept by Jan II between 1625, the year he took over his father’s workshop, and 1651, informs us about his very commercially oriented studio practices. In his diary, the son freely admits that he copied some of his father’s flower garlands; see Denucé 1934, pp. 139–160. 11 The sculpted jar depicted in NM 1099 – though not the bouquet – is repeated with slight variation in a painting (oil on canvas, 181 x 70 cm) in Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. no. 1450, possibly produced in the workshop of Jan Brueghel I; see Díaz Padrón 1995, I, p. 222, repr. in colour on p. 223 (as Jan Brueghel I). 12 Oil on wood, 101 x 76 cm, Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, inv. no. 643; see Ertz 1979, pp. 264, 268, 285, 593 no. 209, figs. 332, 332a (as Jan Brueghel I); Ertz 1984, pp. 431–33 no. 271, illus. (as Jan Brueghel II); and Beele (citing Ertz) in Essen/Vienna/Antwerp 1997/98, cat. no. 88, repr. in colour on p. 293 (as Jan Brueghel I and Jan Brueghel II); and Ertz in Vienna/Essen 2002, p. 38 (as Jan Brueghel I and Jan Brueghel II). 13 Oil on wood, 64 x 59 cm, Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 688A; for which see Ertz 1979, pp. 285, 593 no. 210, colour pl. 357 (as Jan Brueghel I); Brenninkmeijer-de Rooij 1996, p. 83, fig. 76 (as Jan Brueghel I, type XIII, c. 1620/1625). 14 Some of the individual blooms and groups of NM 1099, such as the star lilies at the top centre and the group of tulips and blue irises at the centre right, occur in identical fashion in the Munich Virgin Mary in a Wreath of Flowers of c. 1617/18, a collaborative work by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel I. For the Munich picture, see Renger 2002, pp. 336–341, repr. in colour on pp. 337–339.
Exhibited
Motif categoryStill life
Collection
TechniquePainting
Object category
Keyword
Extern ID