National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: Banquet Piece with Mince Pie
  • Overview
  • Inscription
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

Overview

Heda's largest known painting appears, at first sight, to extend the hospitality of a sumptuous feast. Yet platters and knives teeter precariously over the table's edge, while goblets and compotes already have toppled. Perishable or expended items symbolize life's transience: a snuffed–out candle, spilled olives, half–eaten minced pie, and a lemon, only half–peeled.

From the 1620s to the late 1640s, Dutch artists preferred monochromatic tones for their still lifes and landscapes. Heda was a master of such cool gray or warm tan color schemes. Here, the gold, silver, pewter, and Venetian glass play against a neutral setting and a white tablecloth. Somewhat later in the mid–1600s, brighter colors would characterize the classical period of Dutch painting.

A specialist in banquet still lifes, Heda also painted "breakfast pieces" and, as a writer in 1648 noted, "fruit, and all kinds of knick–knacks." Willem Claesz Heda taught several apprentices including his son, Gerrit Willemsz Heda (the sz at the end of many Dutch names is an abbreviation for szoon, meaning "son of"). Gerrit's Still Life with Ham, dated 1650, reveals a strong debt to his father's style and motifs.

Inscription

lower right on edge of tablecloth: .HEDA.1635.; lower left on edge of tablecloth: (unidentified monogram)

Marks and Labels

null

Provenance

Private collection, the Netherlands; acquired 1948 by private collection; by inheritance to a subsequent owner;[1] (sale, Ader-Picard-Tajan, Paris, 22 June 1990, no. 39); purchased by (Galerie Sanct Lucas, Vienna; Bruno Meissner, Zurich; and Otto Naumann, New York); sold 27 February 1991 to NGA.

[1] According to the 1990 Ader-Picard-Tajan auction catalogue.

Exhibition History

2004
Pieter Claesz: Master of Haarlem Still Life, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; Kunsthaus Zürich; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2004-2005, not in catalogue (shown only in Washington).

Bibliography

1995
Wheelock, Jr., Arthur K. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 99-102, color repro. 101.
2000
Kirsh, Andrea, and Levenson, Rustin S. Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies. Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies, vol. 1. New Haven, 2000: 262.
2004
Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 192-193, no. 153, color repro.

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