Still Life with Fruit

1675

Jacob van Walscapelle

Painter, Dutch, 1644 - 1727

A half-peeled pomegranate, a few nuts, a bunch of purple grapes, and a glass of pale yellow wine sit on the corner of a stone ledge against a dark background in this vertical still life painting. The corner of the chipped gray ledge is close to and lines up with the lower left corner of the painting. Two hazelnuts sit near the front of the ledge, and a twig with three more nuts in papery husks are attached to a twig. Behind that, the flaring cup of the wineglass is made up of flat panels, which are inwardly scalloped along the upper edge, like an upside-down badminton shuttlecock. The stem is made of intertwining ropes of clear and black glass. At the lower center of the composition, the glistening, scarlet-red seeds of the pomegranate contrast with the rust-orange rind. Another twig of hazelnuts is between the pomegranate and the bunch of frosty purple grapes. The vine and a broad, dark green leaf arches over the grapes and pomegranate. The objects are brightly lit from our left against a charcoal-gray background. Molding under the ledge can be made out in the shadows across the bottom edge of the painting. Closer inspection reveals tiny water droplets on the stone ledge and the pomegranate. The artist signed and dated the painting in cursive text on the front face of the ledge, near the lower right corner: “J: Walscappel 1675.”

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Though modest in size and compass, this still-life painting by Jacob van Walscapelle has a remarkable sense of grandeur. Assembling only a few objects on a plain stone ledge, the artist has conveyed a monumentality of presence usually found in much larger and more complex still lifes. Bathed in soft light, every figural element quietly asserts its essential properties. The Venetian-style glass filled with wine sparkles against the somber dark background. The pomegranate bursting with seeds invites the viewer to imagine its ripe taste, as do the grapes spilling over the edge. In addition to their simple beauty, these items are also part of a long iconographic tradition within still-life painting. The grapes and wine evoke the Eucharist, while pomegranates have complex associations with Christ’s suffering and the Resurrection. In this sense, Van Walscapelle's painting encourages the viewer to contemplate Christ's sacrifice and eventual rebirth.

Van Walscapelle was an accomplished still-life painter, though little is known about the trajectory of his career. Born in Dordrecht in 1644, he established himself in Amsterdam in 1673 and remained there until the end of his life. His approach to still-life painting relates to that of Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606–1684), who similarly relished in the complex and versatile beauty of the visible world. Van Walscapelle’s work nevertheless differed from De Heem’s mature paintings in its compositional restraint and elegant simplicity.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 50-B

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on panel

  • Credit Line

    Juliet and Lee Folger/The Folger Fund

  • Dimensions

    overall: 40 x 34.7 cm (15 3/4 x 13 11/16 in.)
    framed: 58.7 x 53 x 5.7 cm (23 1/8 x 20 7/8 x 2 1/4 in.)

  • Accession

    2001.71.1

More About this Artwork

Video:  Two-Minute Tour: Clouds, Ice, and Bounty

Join exhibition curator Betsy Wieseman on a two-minute tour of the 2021-2022 exhibition Clouds, Ice, and Bounty.

Scholarly Article:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Still Life with Fruit, 1675

This horizontal painting shows a group of eight light-skinned musicians and onlookers gathered closely around a rectangular, carpet-covered table. The front edge of the table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting, and seems close to us. Shown from about the waist up, the men and women’s vivid lapis-blue, coral-red, buttercup-yellow, lilac-purple, and moss-green garments fall in crisp folds. Bright reflections on the fabric suggest a satin-like material. Two women wear feathers in their hair and one man’s hat is plumed. One man, wearing crimson red and black, sits with his back to us to our left on the near side of the table. He holds the neck of a bass viol, about the size of a cello, with his left hand, and points to pages of an open music book with the bow in his right hand. The other people cluster on the far side of the table. A man to the left plays a violin; a woman at the center plays a guitar-sized bandora, and a woman to our right plays a lute. The musicians, along with a man who leans over the table from between the two women, look down at the music books. A young man behind the woman at the center holds up a glass of pale liquid with his right hand as he touches his left forefinger to his smiling lips. A man and woman stand close together in the background to our right, in the top right corner of the canvas.

Scholarly Series:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Etienne Le Roy, Brussels). William Tilden Blodgett [1823-1875], New York.[1] (L. Souty Fils, Paris).[2] (Julius H. Weitzner, Inc., New York).[3] G. Huntington Hartford, II [1911-2008], New York;[4] (sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, 12 December 1956, no. 34); (Newhouse Galleries, New York); sold to Jean McGrail, New York;[5] by inheritance to her daughter; (sale, Sotheby's, New York, 25 January 2001, no. 219); (Berenberg Fine Art Limited, Isle of Man); purchased 11 June 2001 through (Rob Smeets, Milan) by NGA.
[1] The names of Le Roy and Blodgett are given as former owners in the catalogue of a 1938 exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum that included the painting. Blodgett was a businessman and varnish manufacturer as well as a collector, who became one of the founders of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Le Roy (1808-1878) was a restorer, dealer, and expert advisor to the Musée Royal de Peinture et de Sculpture in Brussels, and one of two dealers who in 1870 sold to the New York museum what became its first painting acquisitions, a purchase approved by the museum trustees the following year. It is possible that Blodgett purchased the Walscapelle painting for himself when he was in Europe for several months in 1870 negotiating on the Metropolitan's behalf. On the two men's dealings at that time see: Katharine Baetjer, "Buying Pictures for New York: The Founding Purchase of 1871," Metropolitan Museum Journal 39 (2004): 161-245. The painting did not appear in Blodgett’s estate sale on 27 April 1876, held at Chickering Hall in New York.
[2] The 2001 Sotheby's sale catalogue lists this owner. The company was a successor business to Maison Souty, well-known framemakers during the 19th century in Paris.
[3] Weitzner, whose name is given in the 1956 sale catalogue, was possibly the dealer from whom Hartford acquired the painting.
[4] Hartford was the lender of the painting to the 1938 exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum. He was an heir to the A&P supermarket fortune, and owned an extensive art collection.
[5] The information about Newhouse's purchase and sale of the painting is provided by Meg Newhouse Kirkpatrick, of Newhouse Galleries, in her letter of 17 September 2001 to Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., in NGA curatorial files. The 2001 Sotheby's sale catalogue indicates that Newhouse owned the painting with the dealer Frederick Mont, and the 1969 and 1980 references to the painting associate it with Mont, but the Newhouse records do not reveal any information about Mont's ownership.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1873

  • Probably Exposition de tableaux et dessins d'anciens maîtres, La société néerlandaise de bienfaisance, Brussels, 1873, no. 339 (supplement of the catalogue's second edition).

1938

  • The Painters of Still Life, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1938, no. 24, as The Pomegranate.

2021

  • Clouds, Ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2021, no. 2, repro.

Bibliography

1873

  • Decamps, Louis. "Correspondance". Gazette des Beaux-Arts 8 (September 1873): 278 (probably the NGA painting).

  • Société Néerlandaise de Bienfaisance. Exposition de tableaux et dessins d'anciens maîtres. 2nd ed. Exh. cat. Société Néerlandaise de Bienfaisance, Brussels, 1873: probably no. 339 (catalogue supplement).

1938

  • Wadsworth Atheneum. The Painters of Still Life. Exh. cat. Wadsworth Atheneum. Hartford, 1938: no. 24.

1969

  • Bol, Laurens J. Holländische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts nahe den grossen Meistern Landschaften und Stilleben. Braunschweig, 1969: 377 n. 488.

1980

  • Vroom, Nicolaas R. A. A Modest Messageas Intimated by the Painters of the "Monochrome Banketje." 2 vols. Schiedam, 1980: 2:317.

Inscriptions

lower right on ledge, in brown paint: J:Walscappel / 1675

Wikidata ID

Q20177657

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