Oil painting, 'Flowers beneath a Cartouche', Nicolas van Veerendael, 1676

A garland of flowers including roses, tulips and columbines, with fruit, a stalk of wheat and a red admiral butterfly; this is the lower half of a painting, which presumably showed a garland surrounding a cartouche

Given by Miss Elizabeth Davidson

Given by Miss Elizabeth Davidson, 1914
Miss Davidson lived at Calverley Park, Turnbridge Wells, Kent. She inherited a collection of paintings from her father and divided her collection of portraits by Opé [?], paintings by Morland & Ruysdael between her nieces. She died at the age of 97.
The work was transferred to Osterley Park in Dec. 1937. It was still there in 1983 but back at the V&A by 1998.

Historical significance: Nicolas van Veerendael (1626-1691) was a Flemish painter taught by his father, Willem van Veerendael, and was a member of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke by 1657. He primarily painted flower-pieces and his early works, reminiscent of still lifes by Daniel Seghers, and are primarily small, bright, graceful bouquets in tall, narrow vases, or cartouches and garlands surrounding a religious scene, sometimes by another artist, such as the Cartouche with the Virgin Surrounded by a Floral Wreath (Berlin, Gemäldegal.), in which the central grisaille is by Erasmus Quellinus. The bouquets and garlands from the 1670s such as P.16-1914 are more informal, and insects and vanitas elements are sometimes included, indicating his debt to the work of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, with whom he collaborated on a flower still-life (Munich, Alte Pin.). van Veerendael's late style, after 1680, reveals a much more freely and briskly painted style using fewer glazes.

The term ‘still life’ conventionally refers to works depicting an arrangement of diverse inanimate objects including fruits, flowers, shellfish, vessels and artefacts. The term derives from the Dutch 'stilleven', which became current from about 1650 as a collective name for this type of subject matter. Still-life reached the height of its popularity in Western Europe, especially in the Netherlands, during the 17th century although still-life subjects already existed in pre-Classical, times. In the Low Countries, the first types of still life to emerge were flower paintings and banquet tables by artists like Floris van Schooten (c.1585-after 1655). Soon, different traditions of still life with food items developed in Flanders and in the Netherlands where they became especially popular commodities in the new bourgeois art market. Dutch painters played a major role the development of this genre, inventing distinctive variations on the theme over the course of the century while Flemish artist Frans Snyders' established a taste for banquet pieces. These works were developed further in Antwerp by the Dutchman Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1606-1684) who created opulent baroque confections of fruit, flowers, and precious vessels that became a standardized decorative type throughout Europe. Scholarly opinion had long been divided over how all of these images should be understood. The exotic fruits and valuable objects often depicted testify to the prosperous increase in wealth in cities such as Amsterdam and Haarlem but may also function as memento mori, or vanitas, that is, reminders of human mortality and invitations to meditate upon the passage of time.

Acquired as by an unknown Dutch artist of the 17th century in 1914. The signature and inscription were discovered when the picture was cleaned in 1915.

A garland of flowers including roses, tulips and columbines, with fruit, a stalk of wheat and a red admiral butterfly; this is the lower half of a painting, which presumably showed a garland surrounding a cartouche. Nicolas van Veerendael (1626-1691) was a Flemish painter who primarily painted flower-pieces. His early works, reminiscent of still lifes by Daniel Seghers, are primarily small, bright, graceful bouquets in tall, narrow vases, or cartouches and garlands surrounding a religious scene, sometimes by another artist, such as the Cartouche with the Virgin Surrounded by a Floral Wreath (Berlin, Gemäldegal.), in which the central grisaille is by Erasmus Quellinus. The bouquets and garlands from the 1670s such as P.16-1914 are more informal, and insects and vanitas elements are sometimes included, indicating his debt to the work of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, with whom he collaborated.

P.16-1914