(Dordrecht 1642–1722)
A still life of fruit with a mouse and butterflies,
monogrammed lower left: AC,
oil on panel, 40.7 x 60.6 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Porro and C., Milan, 25 February 2004, lot 36;
Private European collection

We are grateful to Fred Meijer, for confirming the attribution on the basis of a high resolution digital photograph.

Abraham van Calraet was first and foremost an animal painter and landscapist, but also produced numerous still lifes. E. Gemar-Koeltzsch writes about him (see Holländische Stilllebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, vol. 2, Lingen, 1995, p. 212): 'Abraham van Calraet’s still lifes almost always show peaches arranged in Chinese porcelain bowls or directly on tabletops, surrounded by grapes and butterflies and sometimes also by shells and cherries. A very moderate impasto applied with a broad brush and translating the various textures of his objects into colour, light, and shadow, is typical of the artist’s painting style. Light is used to emphasise a narrowly delineated area of the composition in order to set the pieces of fruit, primarily peaches, off against the shadowy and mostly very dark surrounding space. The hard shadows thus produced by the fruit lend Calraet’s works a certain drama […]. A highly characteristic feature of Calraet’s compositions is the velvety appearance of his peaches, whose soft, furry surface seems deceptively real and appeals to the beholder’s sense of touch. The painter’s interest entirely focuses on these peaches, for which he also reserves the most powerful colours, vigorous reds and yellows.'

Due to the artists’s identical monograms, numerous paintings by Calraet were wrongly assigned to Aelbert Cuyp. Only Abraham Bredius succeeded in removing Calraet’s paintings from Cuyp’s oeuvre and to place them within an autonomous group of works.