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A basket overflowing with flowers sits on a table alongside fruit, berries, and seashells in this horizontal still life painting. The wide, low straw-colored basket has a woven base and more open, rib-like sides. The bouquet is made up of white and pink roses, a sky-blue iris and another with pale yellow and lavender-purple leaves. There are also a carnation striped with red and white, flame-orange poppies, and at least three tulips, including one that is scarlet red, a white tulip veined with red, and one with red petals streaked with yellow. Other flowers and dark green stems and leaves fill out the arrangement. The basket sits on a slate-gray tabletop that extends off both sides of the painting. Four shells sit to our left of the basket. These include a woodcock murex shell with a spiraling head with spikes and a long, spiny tail; an elongated, smooth conch shell with an ivory-white and brown calico surface; and light blue snail shell. Finally, closest to us, the largest, spiraling triton shell is occupied by a hermit crab. A sprig of glowing red berries sits at the front center of the composition. To our right, a cluster of fruit includes purple and green grapes on the vines, red cherries, a red plum, and two pieces of yellow and blush-pink fruit. The scene is lit from our left against a darkened background, so a dragonfly in the upper right corner is nearly lost in shadow. The artist signed the painting in the lower left corner, “B.vander.ast.”
Read the visual description

A basket overflowing with flowers sits on a table alongside fruit, berries, and seashells in this horizontal still life painting. The wide, low straw-colored basket has a woven base and more open, rib-like sides. The bouquet is made up of white and pink roses, a sky-blue iris and another with pale yellow and lavender-purple leaves. There are also a carnation striped with red and white, flame-orange poppies, and at least three tulips, including one that is scarlet red, a white tulip veined with red, and one with red petals streaked with yellow. Other flowers and dark green stems and leaves fill out the arrangement. The basket sits on a slate-gray tabletop that extends off both sides of the painting. Four shells sit to our left of the basket. These include a woodcock murex shell with a spiraling head with spikes and a long, spiny tail; an elongated, smooth conch shell with an ivory-white and brown calico surface; and light blue snail shell. Finally, closest to us, the largest, spiraling triton shell is occupied by a hermit crab. A sprig of glowing red berries sits at the front center of the composition. To our right, a cluster of fruit includes purple and green grapes on the vines, red cherries, a red plum, and two pieces of yellow and blush-pink fruit. The scene is lit from our left against a darkened background, so a dragonfly in the upper right corner is nearly lost in shadow. The artist signed the painting in the lower left corner, “B.vander.ast.”

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Basket of Flowers

Balthasar van der Ast

Date
c. 1622
Medium
oil on panel
Dimensions
painted surface: 17.8 x 23.5 cm (7 x 9 1/4 in.) overall (with additions): 18.4 x 24.4 cm (7 1/4 x 9 5/8 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
1992.51.2
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
  • Flower
  • still life
  • still
  • 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 1992.51.1]); Levij Pakker.[2] Mrs. Beaumont, England; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 19 March 1906, no. 17 [with NGA 1992.51.1]); (Collings).[3] (Fritz Gerstel Gallery, Berlin); (his sale, Kunstsalon Keller & Reiner, Berlin, 21-22 January 1908, no. 36 [with NGA 1992.51.1]). (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 1992.51.1]); (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 left: .B.vander.ast...

NGA object ID 76208. 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.