(Antwerp 1587–1661)
A gilded wine cooler with artichokes, wine glasses and a stoneware jug, a silver dish and a bread roll on a draped table,
signed and dated lower right: ALex . Aderianfen . f .1647,
oil on canvas, 62 x 82 cm, framed

Provenance:
Theodoor Van Lerius, Antwerp, before 1881;
sale, Phillips, London, 18 April 1989, lot 71;
with David Koetser, Zurich, 1989;
Private collection, Switzerland

Literature:
T. Van Lerius, Biographies d’artistes anversois I, Alexandre Adriaenssen (en Flamand Alexander Adriaenssen) (1587–1661), Maatschappij der Antwerpse Bibliophilen, 8, Antwerp 1880, pp. 20–21;
F. J. van den Branden, Geschiedenis der Antwerpse Schilderschool, Antwerp 1883, p. 42;
A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstlerlexikon mit mehr als 3000 Monogrammen, vol. I, Leipzig 1906, p. 3;
D. Koetser, Fine Old Master Paintings, principally of the Dutch and Flemish Schools, Zurich 1989–90, cat. no. 3, illustrated;
G. Spiessens, Leven en werken van de Antwerpse schilder Alexander Adriaenssen (1578–1661), Brussels 1990, pp. 132–33, pl. 35

The present picture is an outstanding example of Flemish Baroque still life painting of one of its leading practitioners, Alexander Adriaenssen. The claw footed gilded vessel bearing artichokes, forms an asymetric anchor to the right of the work, while the receding plane of the silver salver with the overlapping elipses of the wine beaker and glasses behind are typical compositional devices used by the master. The sense of prevailing luxury was important in Antwerp, where Adriaenssen was active, not simply as objects of vanitas, but as luxury goods in themselves as items of display of opulence - the blockaded port of Antwerp had already begun to lose its relevance to the new booming entrepots of the North such as Amsterdam. This did not however stop the development of the pronkstilleven or ostentatious still life pieces such as the present work as a distinct sub-genre in Antwerp in the late 1630s and early 1640s. 

Notably, Adriaenssen was employed along with his contemporary Frans Snyders, who also characteristically often portrayed relatively expensive vegetables such as artichokes in dominant positions in his compositions, to put on a grand show of Antwerp’s prior glories to the Spanish crown, when both assisted Peter Paul Rubens in the decorations of Antwerp for the Joyous Entry of Cardinal Infante Ferdinand in 1635. Adriaenssen, in addition to his pronkstilleven, such as the present work, was particularly adept at painting fish, despite Antwerp’s lack of a fishing fleet of its own due to the closure of the Scheldt by the Dutch navy.