- Private collection, Belgium, from c. 1900 onwards

- Anonymous sale, London (Sotheby’s), 9 July 2014, no. 5

- With Johnny van Haeften, London, 2016

- Private collection

Aachen, Ludwig-Suermondt-Museum/ Herzogliches Museum, Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha, Die Stillleben des Balthasar van der Ast (1593/94-1657),  2016 (catalogue edited by S. Ayooghi, S. Böhmer and T. Trümper), no. 18, pp. 146-49 

Balthasar van der Ast is arguably the best and certainly the most renowned still life painter of around the second quarter of the Dutch Golden Age. His father died in 1609 after which he lived under the guardianship of his brother until 1617/18 in Middelburg. He then went to live with his sister Maria, who had married the great pioneer of flower painting Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621) in 1604. Bosschaert became Van der Ast’s teacher. They probably left Middelburg together, since they are recorded as living in Bergen op Zoom in 1615, and subsequently moved to Utrecht. In 1619, Van der Ast entered the Utrecht guild as a master. In 1632, Van der Ast settled in Delft, where he married and spent the remainder of his life.

Soon after the death of Bosschaert in 1621, Van der Ast succeeded him as the leading painter of still lifes in the Netherlands. A prolific artist, he painted a vast body of still lifes of flowers, fruit and shells, of which some 200 are still known. They range from large canvases to tiny coppers and panels, usually executed in fine detail. His earliest dated paintings are from 1617; only a few are dated after 1625. In his famous list of painters compiled between 1669 and 1678, the Amsterdam doctor Jan Sysmus described Van der Ast as a painter of flowers, shells and lizards, and placed the word ‘moy’ (beautiful) beside his name.

During the 1620s and 1630s, Van der Ast’s domicile Utrecht was the main centre of flower painting in the Republic. This is where the present picture was painted as well. Besides Van der Ast, Roelant Savery (1576 - 1639), Johannes Baers (? – after 1640), Jacob Marrel (1613/14 – 1681) and the sons of Bosschaert the Elder worked there. A large portion of Van der Ast’s oeuvre originated in Utrecht during the first half of the 1620s and this is the best documented period of his activity.

Still lifes such as the present, showing a floral bouquet in a vase, were among Van der Ast’s favourite subjects, which he had initially adopted from Bosschaert. The latter also inspired Van der Ast to present his bouquets in small porcelain vases. Already in an early floral composition of about 1604, Bosschaert himself used a porcelain vase as a container. Our painting was previously unrecorded and only surfaced quite recently. Belonging to a small group of cabinet-sized pictures featuring a bouquet in a Chinese porcelain vase, this work is a wonderful addition to Van der Ast’s known oeuvre.

Van der Ast, like many of his fellow still life specialists, composed their paintings with the aid of preparative studies of individual flowers and so he did not paint the present arrangement from life. Although relatively modest it contains a great variety of species with various sorts of tulips filling the space. We also see lilies of the valley and lower left on the ledge there is a sprig of scarlet pimpernel. Its red accents form a subtle but eloquent contrast with the blue of the refined petals of the forget me nots. The white rose in the centre of the composition is a later addition and painted on top of a tulip with red and yellow stripes. According to the still life scholar Fred Meijer this flower can be attributed to Abraham Mignon (1640-1679). The real star is the tulip at the top which recurs in other works by the artist. It is the Summer Beauty (Zomerschoon), a variety of tulip that was created in 1620, became extremely expensive during the years of the tulipmania and which still exists. Less conspicuous but no less important are the many small animals that Van der Ast added such as a wasp, dragonfly, a butterfly (Painted Lady) and the sand lizard with its huge claws sitting on the artist’s signature. Van der Ast rendered all the details with painstaking detail and with a sense for poetry.