Osias Beert the Elder (Antwerp circa 1580-1623)
Tulips, narcissi, an iris and other flowers in a glass vase on a table top with a butterfly
oil on panel
46.7 x 35.8cm (18 3/8 x 14 1/8in).
Footnotes:
Provenance
With Gallery Eugene Slatter, London, before 1953
With John Mitchell, London circa 1954, where purchased by the present owner's parents

Literature
M.L. Hairs, Les Peintres Flamands de Fleurs Au XVIIe Siècle, Brussels, 1983, pp. 341, 457
P. Mitchell, European Flower Painters, London, 1973, p. 44, ill., no. 86

Although Osias Beert's importance as a painter of so-called 'laden table' still lifes, which became a speciality in Antwerp and Haarlem in the first decades of the 17th century, has always been recognised, it is in more recent years that Beert's equally significant role as a flower painter had been assessed. Following Curt Benedict's article of 1938, his oeuvre of pure flowerpieces has been painstakingly built up by Dr. Hairs (see Hairs, op.cit.; and C. Benedict, 'Un peintre oublié de natures mortes: Osias Beert', L'Amour de l'Art, vol. XIX, 1938, pp. 307-313). In this respect he was arguably one of the most original and influential of the first generation of northern still life painters. Along with the Utrecht master, Roelandt Savery, he may be distinguished from his contemporaries by a strong sense of chiarascuro; while both artists were skilled at creating subtle atmospheric effects, juxtaposing, for example, the cold texture of the glass vase in the present work with the velvet softness of a rose petal. The present painting further exhibits Beert's pleasingly rich and various palette and his arrangement of typically tousled petals weighing down the roses, which are seemingly too heavy for their sinuous stems.