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A basket holding a pile of several kinds of fruit and two blue and white porcelain plates nearly fills this horizontal still life painting. More fruit is scattered around the smoke-gray ledge on which the basket sits, and the background is purple-tinged gray. The basket sits near the back edge of the ledge, and it has ribbed sides so pieces of round fruit, perhaps apples, are visible inside. Green, red, and purple grapes, green and orange grape leaves, apples, plums, apricots, an orange, and a quince are piled between the two blue-painted plates, which are propped in the basket at an angle to hold the fruit like cupped hands. More fruit, including plums, quince, cherries, and medlars, cover most of the ledge around the basket. The scene is lit from our left so the fruit casts shadows to our right. The artist signed the painting near the lower right corner, “B. vander. ast.”
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A basket holding a pile of several kinds of fruit and two blue and white porcelain plates nearly fills this horizontal still life painting. More fruit is scattered around the smoke-gray ledge on which the basket sits, and the background is purple-tinged gray. The basket sits near the back edge of the ledge, and it has ribbed sides so pieces of round fruit, perhaps apples, are visible inside. Green, red, and purple grapes, green and orange grape leaves, apples, plums, apricots, an orange, and a quince are piled between the two blue-painted plates, which are propped in the basket at an angle to hold the fruit like cupped hands. More fruit, including plums, quince, cherries, and medlars, cover most of the ledge around the basket. The scene is lit from our left so the fruit casts shadows to our right. The artist signed the painting near the lower right corner, “B. vander. ast.”

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Basket of Fruits

Balthasar van der Ast

Date
c. 1622
Medium
oil on panel
Dimensions
painted surface: 18.1 x 22.8 cm (7 1/8 x 9 in.) overall (with additions): 18.8 x 23.5 cm (7 3/8 x 9 1/4 in.) framed: 38.4 x 43.8 x 3.2 cm (15 1/8 x 17 1/4 x 1 1/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1992.51.1
Credit line
Collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon
Time span
1601 to 1650
Department
CNE-B
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • Baroque
  • Dutch
  • still life
  • still
  • Fruit
  • Still life
  • Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (NGA Online Editions)
Provenance

Probably Princess Amalia van Solms [1602-1675], The Hague, by 1632.[1] (sale, Philippus van der Schley, Amsterdam, 16 February 1802 and days following, 1st day, no. 55 [with NGA 1992.51.2]); Levij Pakker.[2] Mrs. Beaumont, England; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 19 March 1906, no. 17 [with NGA 1992.51.2]); (Collings).[3] (Fritz Gerstel Gallery, Berlin); (his sale, Kunstsalon Keller & Reiner, Berlin, 21-22 January 1908, no. 36 [with NGA 1992.51.2]). (Kunsthandel Gebr. Douwes, Amsterdam), c. 1938; sold to Dr. Hans Wetzlar, Amsterdam, by 1952;[4] (his sale, Sotheby Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, 9 June 1977, no. 5 [with NGA 1992.51.2]); (John Mitchell & Son, London); sold November 1977 to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1992 to NGA. [1] According to an inventory of the collection of the Prince of Orange and his wife Amalia van Solms made in August 1632. [2] This sale was kindly brought to the attention of Arthur Wheelock, Jr., by Sam Segal; see his letter of 12 February 2009 in NGA curatorial files. The buyer is noted in the sale contents section of the Getty Provenance Index Databases, J. Paul Getty Trust (sale catalog N-23). [3] The Mellon collection records (copy in NGA curatorial files) indicate that the seller at the 1906 sale was a "private English collection (? Mrs. Beaumont)." This information was kindly confirmed, and the buyer's name provided, by Lynda McLeod, Librarian, Christie's Archives, London, in her e-mail of 28 March 2013, in NGA curatorial files. [4] According to information provided to Paul Mellon at the time of his acquisition (see NGA curatorial files). The painting was published in M.J. Friedländer's 1952 catalogue of the Wetzlar Collection, no. 3.

Inscription

lower right: .B.vander.ast...

NGA object ID 76207. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.