Still Life with Nautilus Cup

1665/1670

A tall goblet made with a spiraling nautilus shell on a gold and silver stem, a blue and white lidded, porcelain bowl, an orange, a cut lemon, and a bunched up, woven rug are gathered on a tabletop in front of a black background in this vertical still life painting. Light falling on the objects from our left contrasts sharply with the deep shadow beyond, which makes some details difficult to make out. The objects might be gathered on a silver tray. At the center of the composition, the flagon is made with a shimmering, ivory-colored nautilus shell with its wide opening facing up. The stem is made of gold bands coiling around a silver figurine, which is nearly lost in shadow. To our right, a white porcelain bowl has a rounded bottom and tall sides. It is painted with blue designs around a raised relief showing two people in crimson-red and harvest-gold garments. A utensil sits in the bowl to our right, and the lid, which has a finial in the shape of an animal, rests angled upward, partially in the bowl and partially on the stem of that utensil. A translucent, cylindrical knife handle protrudes toward us, angled to our right, in front of the bowl. A rug with a geometric pattern of rust red, tan, and pine green is bunched next to the bowl, along the right side of the painting. To our left of the nautilus cup, an orange with a stem and green leaves sits next to a bright, glistening lemon at the foot of the cup. Between the two pieces of fruit, the vivid yellow lemon rind has been peeled into a long, curling strip that curves off the front edge of the table.

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Willem Kalf was one of the most celebrated, sought after, and successful still-life painters of the seventeenth century. Despite the lack of documentary evidence that he operated a workshop with assistants, the existence of multiple replicas by less adroit hands indicates that Kalf did employ assistants during his years in Amsterdam. This Still Life with Nautilus Cup must be one of those workshop replicas. (Kalf’s original is lost.) The lesser quality of the painting is most evident in the lack of definition of the lemon rind and the relatively coarse rendering of the tapestry.

The nautilus cup, a polished turban shell mounted on an elaborately wrought, gilded-silver base in the form of a putto holding a horn of plenty, appears in a number of Kalf’s still lifes of the late 1660s. The turban shell, with its mother-of-pearl luminosity and symbolic association with a cornucopia, made it a particularly appropriate focal point for Kalf’s images of wealth and prosperity. The blue-and-white Wan-Li porcelain bowl with lid is decorated with colored figures representing the eight immortals of Taoist belief.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Robert H. and Clarice Smith

  • Dimensions

    overall: 68.2 × 58 cm (26 7/8 × 22 13/16 in.)
    framed: 91.44 × 80.01 × 11.43 cm (36 × 31 1/2 × 4 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    1974.109.1

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Still Life with Nautilus Cup, 1665/1670

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

Possibly G.L.M. van Es, Wassenaar.[1] Probably Colonel Towers.[2] (Leonard Koetser, London); sold 1946 to (Edward Speelman, London);[3] sold 1950 or 1958 to (Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam);[4] sold 1958 to Mr. W. Reineke, Amersfoort; re-purchased 1968 by (Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam), with a half-share sold to (Newhouse, London);[5] sold 21 January 1969 by (Newhouse, London) to Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Smith, Washington, D.C.;[6] gift 1974 to NGA.
[1] Noted in Lucius Grisebach, Willem Kalf, 1619-1693, Berlin, 1974: 279.
[2] The name of Col. Towers is given in the 1950 De Boer exhibition catalogue.
[3] See the letter dated 31 March 1989 from Edward Speelman to Anke van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven, in NGA curatorial files.
[4] The letter dated 31 March 1989 from Edward Speelman to Anke van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven gives the date of his sale to P. de Boer as 1950. However, a letter of 17 April 1989 from H. de Boer to Anke van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven says the firm purchased the painting from Speelman in 1958. Both letters are in NGA curatorial files.
[5] The transactions from 1958 to 1969 are described in H. de Boer's letter of 17 April 1989 to Anke van Wagenberg-ter Hoeven, in NGA curatorial files.
[6] The sale date to the Smiths is given in their collection records; copy in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1948

  • 1948 Exhibition of Dutch and Flemish Masters, Eugene Slatter Gallery, London, 1948, no. 13.

1950

  • Zomertentoonstelling 1950, Pieter de Boer Gallery, Amsterdam, 1950, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1958

  • Kunstbezit rondom Laren, Singer Museum, Laren, The Netherlands, 1958, no. 106, repro.

1962

  • Nederlandse stillevens uit de zeventiende eeuw, Dordrechts Museum, 1962, no. 65, repro.

1979

  • Extended loan for use by Secretary Michael Blumenthal, U.S. Department of Treasury, Washington, D.C., 1979-1980.

1980

  • Extended loan for use by Secretary G. William Miller, U.S. Department of Treasury, Washington, D.C., 1980.

1998

  • A Collector's Cabinet, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998, no. 28.

Bibliography

1948

  • Eugene Slatter Gallery. Exhibition of Dutch and Flemish Masters. Exh. cat. Eugene Slatter Gallery, London, 1948: no. 13.

1950

  • Pieter de Boer Gallery. Zomertentoonstelling 1950. Exh. cat. Pieter de Boer Gallery, Amsterdam, 1950: unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1958

  • Boer, Rudolf G. de , D. P. R. A. Bouvy, and P. Eilers. Kunstbezit rondom Laren, 13de-20ste eeuw: schilderijen-beeldhouwwerken. Exh. cat. Singer Museum, Laren, 1958: no. 106, repro.

1962

  • Bol, Laurens J. Nederlandse Stillevens uit de 17e Eeuw. Exh. cat. Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, 1962: 29, 71, no. 65, repro.

1965

  • "Les cours de ventes." Connaissance des Arts 166 (December 1965): 161, no. 12, repro.

1974

  • Grisebach, Lucius. Willem Kalf, 1619-1693. Berlin, 1974: 278-279, as copy of no. 140.

1980

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings: Addenda to Summary Catalogue. Washington, 1980: no. 2676, repro.

1985

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. Washington, 1985: 213, repro.

1995

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1995: 149-152, color repro. 151.

1998

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. A Collector's Cabinet. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1998: 35, 66, no. 28.

Inscriptions

probably by another hand, lower left on edge of tabled: W.Kalf

Wikidata ID

Q20177607

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