(Haarlem 1627–1698 London)
A Vanitas still life including a silver urn, musical instruments and flowers,
signed centre left: P. Roestraeten,
oil on canvas, 126 x 102.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Christie’s, London, 30 July 1943, lot 77;
Private collection, United Kingdom;
with Bertil Rapps, Stockholm, circa 1950;
Private collection, Sweden;
Private collection, United Kingdom, 1990

Literature:
F. G. Meijer, Dutch and Flemish Still Life Paintings Bequeathed by Daisy Linda Ward, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 2003, pp. 29-30, no. 13, illustrated

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for confirming the attribution of the present work to Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraeten, after inspection of the original. The picture is presented in its original Seventeenth Century frame.

The present canvas is an outstanding example of van Roestraten’s characteristic format, coupling ‘portraits’ of precious and highly decorative silverware, which can be traced to several important former and current English collections, with poignant symbols of vanitas, here most obviously symbolised by the skull crowned with laurel leaves on the right. The reflection of the artist’s own studio in the polished glass of the orb may be compared with the master’s A Vanitas, in the Royal Collection, Hampton Court Palace, (inv. no. RCIN 402604). Similiarly the discarded crown and sceptre on the left of the present composition, and the globe behind the skull to the right instill a reminder that all majesty pales, and all empires fall before the almighty and the coming end of days.

According to Houbraken, Van Roestraeten was a pupil of the Haarlem master Frans Hals, and was active in Amsterdam before apparently moving to London sometime in the 1660s. He seems to have been a business partner of fellow Dutchman, Sir Peter Lely, with whom he enjoyed some manner of market sharing agreement, with Lely portraying collectors, and Van Roestraeten, formerly a portraitist, instead painting their prized possessions, such as the aforementioned silverware, and porcelain. Injured in the Great Fire of London of 1666, Van Roestraeten recovered and worked on until the end of the century, his death being recorded in St. Paul’s in 1700.