National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: Still Life with Asparagus and Red Currants
  • Overview
  • Inscription
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

Overview

Little is known about the still-life painter Adriaen Coorte, except that he worked in Middelburg. Indeed, until the late 1950s, when he was rediscovered by the Dutch art historian L. J. Bol, Coorte's name hardly appeared in discussions of Dutch art. Now, however, he is rightly recognized as a gifted and original master, one whose spare and carefully balanced compositions are highly prized by both public and private collectors.

Coorte often focused his compositions on discrete elements placed on a stone tabletop. Whether his focus was a bowl of cherries, an arrangement of exotic shells, or a bunch of asparagus such as in this small masterpiece, he imbued his scenes with a haunting timelessness. His abstract compositions have their own beauty, which he enhanced by using light, atmosphere, and texture. Coorte has given this small image great dignity and classical grandeur through the compositional balance established with the bunch of white asparagus and sprig of red currants. A soft light illuminates the still-life elements in this modest and elegant painting, subtly playing over their painted forms and revealing their delicate palette of purples, greens, whites, and reds.

Inscription

lower left on front of ledge in black paint: A. Coorte. 1696; on reverse: two circular red seals removed from previous stretcher and set into current stretcher, on each, “IRENE” under a crown, and large, embossed fabric monogram on a piece of fabric that may have been cut from a previous lining fabric, under a crown, ornately intertwined letters, possibly “IBK”

Marks and Labels

null

Provenance

Baroness Irene von der Becke-Klüchtzner. "property of a gentleman"; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 8 July 1977, no. 84); (David Koetser Gallery, Zurich); private collection; (David Koetser Gallery, Zurich); purchased 7 October 2002 by NGA.

Exhibition History

2003
Small Wonders: Dutch Still Lifes by Adriaen Coorte, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2003, checklist no. 6, color repro.

Bibliography

1977
Bol, Laurens J. Adriaen Coorte: A Unique Late Seventeenth Century Dutch Still-Life Painter. Assen, 1977: 67-68, no. a.

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