Oil painting, 'Porringers and Nautilus Cup', Pieter van Roestraten, ca. 1660-ca. 1680

A still life with a roemer of white wine, a nautilus shell cup with silver-gilt mounts, a two handled silver cup and cover, a porcelain bowl of grapes and various other fruits strewn about the table.

Bequeathed by Lionel A. Crichton

Bequeathed by Lionel A. Crichton, 1939

Historical significance: Pieter (Gerritsz.) van Roestraten, (1629/30-1700) was a Dutch painter, apprenticed to Frans Hals in Haarlem until 1651 and married to his daughter from 1654. Sometime between 1663 and 1665 he went to London where he specialised in rich and decorative flower paintings and still-lifes, strongly influenced by the luxurious pronk stilleven style of the Amsterdam painter Willem Kalf. Roestraten was renowned for his skillful depiction of silver (candlesticks, porringers, wine coolers and tea caddies), lacquered objects, porcelain, and especially the English red stoneware teapots and cups so much in favour at the time. Good examples are the Still life with a Silver Candlestick (Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen) and Still-life with a Theorbo (London, Buckingham Pal., Royal Col.). In London, Roestraten painted primarily costly objects for English aristocrats and many of his are paintings virtual 'portraits' of objects they owned. In P.4-1939 for example, the nautilus shell cup, popular showpieces in seventeenth-century collections of curiosities, which would only appear on the table on special occasions, is Dutch or German (c. 1620); while the two handled cup and cover is English, c. 1660-80, with a London hall-mark. The typical Dutch roemer holds a draught of white wine, a luxurious beverage imported from France, Germany or Spain but distributed by the Dutch throughout Europe for a great profit. Consequently, this still life functions as a kind of showpiece of exotic and costly goods painted in London for the English aristocracy, yet in an an entirely Dutch flavour.

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. As a genre, this style originates in the early 15th century in Flanders with Hugo van der Goes (ca.1440-1482), Hans Memling (ca.1435-1494) and Gerard David (ca.1460-1523) who included refined still-life details charged with symbolic meaning in their compositions in the same manner as illuminators from Ghent or Bruges did in their works for decorative purpose. 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.

A still life with a roemer of white wine, a nautilus shell cup with silver-gilt mounts, a two handled silver cup and cover, a porcelain bowl of grapes and various other fruits strewn about the table. Pieter (Gerritsz.) van Roestraten, (1629/30-1700) was a Dutch painter, apprenticed to Frans Hals in Haarlem until 1651 and married to his daughter from 1654. Sometime between 1663 and 1665 he went to London where he specialised in rich and decorative flower paintings and still-lifes, strongly influenced by the luxurious pronk stilleven style of the Amsterdam painter Willem Kalf. Roestraten artist was renowned for his skillful depiction of silver (candlesticks, porringers, wine coolers and tea caddies), lacquered objects, porcelain, and especially the English red stoneware teapots and cups so much in favour at the time. Good examples are the Still-life with a Silver Candlestick (Rotterdam, Mus. Boymans–van Beuningen) and Still-life with a Theorbo (London, Buckingham Pal., Royal Col.). In London, van Roestraten painted primarily costly objects for English aristocrats, many of his paintings virtual 'portraits' of objects they owned. In P.4-1939 for example, the nautilus shell cup, popular showpieces in seventeenth-century collections of curiosities which would only appear on the table on special occasions, is Dutch or German, c. 1620 while the two handled cup and cover is English, c. 1660-80, with a London hall-mark. The typical Dutch roemer holds a draught of white wine, a luxurious beverage imported from France Germany and Spain but distributed by the Dutch throughout Europe for a great profit. Consequently, this still life functions as a kind of showpiece of exotic and costly goods painted in London for the English aristocracy, yet in an an entirely Dutch flavour.

P.4-1939