About This Artwork

Pieter Claesz
Dutch, 1597/98–1660

Still Life, c. 1625

Oil on panel
18 7/8 x 30 1/4 in. (48 x 76.9 cm)
Inscribed on the knife blade: PC in ligature
Simeon B. Williams Fund, 1935.300

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Worcester, Worcester Art Museum, "Condition; Excellent," March - April 1951, cat. 8.

Publication History

Art Institute of Chicago, Report for the Year 1935 in Art Institute of Chicago Bulletin 30, Part III (1936), pp. 23, ill., 36.

“Condition: Excellent,” Worcester Art Museum News Bulletin and Calendar 16 (1951) p. 25 (ill).

Ingvar Bergström, Dutch Still-life Painting in the Seventeenth Century, London, 1956, pp. 118, 305.

Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago. A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 78 (ill.), p. 186.

N. R. A. Vroom, De schilders van het monochrome banketje (Amsterdam, 1945), pp. 17-18, 198, no. 19, fig. 5.

N. R. A. Vroom, A Modest Message as intimated by the painters of the 'Monochrome Banketje' vol. 1 (Schiedam, 1980), pp. 89-91, fig. 119.

Alberto Veco, Simposio: cerimonie e apparati, exh. cat., Galleria Lorenzelli, Bergamo, 1983, p. 176.

Peter C. Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986), p. 52.

Claus Grimm, Stilleben. Die niederländischen und deutschen Meister, Stuttgart and Zurich, 1988, p. 108, figs. 53, 54.

Walter S. Melion, Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck (Chicago, 1991), pp. 73-74, fig. 62 (ill.).

Pamela Hibbs Decoteau, Clara Peeters, 1594 - ca. 1640 (Freren, 1992), pp. 157-158, fig. 61.

Anna-Elisabeth Theuerkauff-Liederwald, Venezianisches Glas der Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg. Die Sammlung Herzog Alfreds von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha (1844-1900) (Lingen, 1994), p. 312, fig. 66.

Erika Gemar-Koeltzsch, Luca Bilder Lexikon. Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, vol. 2, Lingen, 1995, p. 227, no. 76/2, ill. p. 228.

Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Die Geschichte des Stillbens, Munich, 1998, pp. 122-123, fig. 87.

M. Brunner-Bulst, "Claesz. (Claessen), Pieter" in Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, vol. 19, Munich and Leipzig, 1998, p. 354.

Martina Brunner-Bulst in Johnny Van Haeften Gallery, Dutch and Flemish Old Master Paintings (London, 1999), n.p., under no. 3, ill.

Martina Brunner-Bulst, Pieter Claesz., der Hauptmeister des Haarlemer Stillebens im 17. Jahrhundert (Lingen, 2004), pp. 150, 208, no. 6, ill.

Ownership History

Probably Cassirer, Amsterdam [the mounts of photos in both the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague, and the Witt Library, London, are marked Cassirer, Amsterdam, 1939, though the picture was at the Art Institute from late 1935; the Witt photo is also annotated “Worcester, Mass.”; see also Vroom 1945 and Bergstrom 1956]. M. Knoedler & Co., New York by 1935 [receipt dated September 9, 1935 in Registrar’s office; the number A 1559 printed on a label on the back may be the Knoedler’s stock number]; sold to the Art Institute, 1935.