Trompe-l'Oeil Still Life with a Flower Garland and a Curtain

CC0 Public Domain Designation

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

1658

Adriaen van der Spelt (Dutch, 1630-1673)
Frans van Mieris (Dutch, 1635-1681)

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Adriaen van der Spelt
Title: Trompe-l'Oeil Still Life with a Flower Garland and a Curtain
Origin: Netherlands
Date: 1658
Medium: Oil on panel
Inscriptions: Inscribed lower left: van der Spelt.1658
Dimensions: 18 1/4 × 25 1/8 in. (46.5 × 63.9 cm)
Credit Line: Wirt D. Walker Fund
Reference Number: 1949.585
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/66042/manifest.json

Johann David Passavant, Kunstreise durch England und Belgien (Frankfurt, 1833) p. 63.
Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Works of Art and Artists in England (London, 1838) p. 254.
Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, vol. 2, (London, 1854), p. 71.
Alfred von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, vol. 2, (1910), p. 645.
Daniel Catton Rich, “In a Minor Key: Portraits by F. Floris and Perroneau; Flowers and Blue Curtain by A. van der Spelt … ” Chicago Art Institute Quarterly 47 (April 1953) p. 32.
Patrik Reuterswärd, “Tavelförhänget. Kring ett motiv i holländskt 1600-talsmåleri,” Konsthistorisk tidskrift 25 (1956), pp. 100-103, fig. 8.
Peter Mitchell, European Flower Painters (London, 1973), p. 242, fig. 348 and p. 244.
John Fowler and John Cornforth, English Decoration in the 18th Century (London, 1974), p. 100, fig. 80.
Christian Geelhaar, “Looking at Pictures with David Hockney,” Pantheon 36 (1978) p. p. 237 and fig. 8.
Reinhart Schleier, “Das Stilleben im Bezugsfeld der Bildgattungen” in Stilleben in Europa, exh. cat. Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst and Kulturgeschichte, Münster, and Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden Baden, 1979-1980, p.545, ill.
Patrik Reuterswärd, “Om realismen i holländsk bildtradition,” Konsthistorisk tidskrift 49 (1980), pp. 2 and 5, fig. 5.
E. de J[ongh] in Still-Life in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat., Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand, 1982, pp. 146, fig. 25c under no. 25.
“Blomsterstilleben” (reproduction only), Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 49 (1980) p. 5.
Miriam Milman, Le Trompe-L’Oeil (Geneva, 1984), p.59, ill. and dustjacket.
Harald Marx, Stilleben als Augentäuschung Trompe-loeil (Leipzig, 1985), p. 8, fig. 4.
Peter C. Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986), p. 52 and fig. 70.
Eric Jan Sluijter, “’Schilders van cleyne, subtile ende curieuse dingen’: Leidse ‘fijnschilders’ in contemporaine bronnen” in Leidse fijnschilders. Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge. 1630-1760, exh. cat. Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, 1988, pp. 39-40, 52–53, 121-22, fig. 11.
Peter Hecht in De Hollandse fijnschilders. Van Gerard Dou tot Adriaen van der Werff, exh. cat. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 1989-90, pp. 42-3.
Alfred Bader in The Detective’s Eye Investigating the Old Masters, exh. cat. Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1989, p.108 and fig. 2.
Norbert Schneider, Stilleben. Realität und Symbolik der Dinge, Stilleben Malerei frühen Neuzeit (Cologne, 1989), p.13, 16, ill.
Erika Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, vol. 3, Luca Bild-Lexikon (Lingen, 1995), pp. 949-50, no. 372/1.
Mariët Westermann, The Amusements of Jan Steen. Comic Painting in the Seventeenth Century (Zwolle, 1996), pp. 28, 42, n. 49, fig. 10.
The Art of JAMA, One Hundred Covers and Essays from the Journal of the American Medical Association (St. Louis, Missouri, 1997), pp. 16–17, ill.
Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, Die Geschichte des Stillebens (Munich, 1998), pp. 166, ill., 167, 170, fig. 120.
Olaf Koetser in Illusions. Gijsbrechts, Royal Master of Deception, exh. cat., Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, 1999, p. 24, fig. 3.
Jet Pijzel-Dommisse, Het Hollandse Pronkpoppenhuis: Interieur en huishouden in de 17de en 18de eeuw, Zwolle, 2000, pp. 126, 411, n. 512.
Understanding Paintings: Themes in art explored and explained, ed. by Alexander Sturgis and Hollis Clayson, New York, 2000, pp. 224, ill., 266.
Eric Jan Sluijter, “All striving to adorne their homes with costly pieces”: Two Case Studies of Paintings in Wealthy Interiors’” in Art and Home. Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat., Denver Art Museum and The Newark Museum, 2001, ed. Mariët Westermann, pp. 123, 126, fig. 168.
Fred G. Meijer, The Ashmolean Museum Oxford, Catalogue of the Collection of Paintings. The Collection of Dutch ad Flemish Still-life Paintings Bequeathed by Daisy Linda Ward, Zwolle, 2003, p. 295, fig. 79.2.
Adriaan van der Willigen and Fred G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden, 2003, p. 188.
Emmanuelle Hénin, “Parrhasios and the Stage Curtain: Theatre, Metapainting and the Idea of Representation in the Seventeenth Century,” Art History 33 (2010), pp. 257, 259, pl. 2.
Susan Merriam, Seventeenth-Century Flemish Garland Paintings. Still Life, Vision, and the Devotional Image (Farnham and Burlington, 2012), p. 91, pl. 7.
Robert Fucci, “Parrhusius and the art of display. The illusionistic curtain in seventeenth-century Dutch painting,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 65 (2015), pp. 162, 169, fig. 12.
Andrew Moore, Nathan Fils, and Francesca Vanke, The Paston Treasure: Microcosm of the Known World, exh. cat. (Yale Center for British Art/ Norfolk Museums Service/ Yale University Press, 2018), p. 93, fig. 61.

Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie, La nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours, 1952, no. 48, as van der Spelt.
New York, Wildenstein, Magic of Flowers in Painting, 1954, cat. no. 76, as van der Spelt
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Art of the Edge: European Frames 1300-1900, 1986, cat. 35, as van der Spelt.
The Hague, Mauritshuis, Great Dutch Paintings from America, September 28, 1990–January 13, 1991; San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, February 16, 1991–May 5, 1991, cat. 57.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Deceptions and Illusions. Five Centuries of Trompe l’Oeil Painting in Europe and America, October 13, 2002–March 2, 2003, no. 10
The Hague, Mauritshuis, Frans van Mieris 1635-1681, October 1, 2005–January 12, 2006; traveled to Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, February 26–May 21, 2006, no. 16.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Silk Road: History and Metaphor, 2006-2007 (no cat.).

Henric Bugge van Ring (died 1669), Leyden, by 1667 [his inventory of that year, “een stuk met bloemen van der Spelt en een gordijntgen daer bij staende van Mieris” (A piece with flowers by van der Spelt and a little curtain with it by Mieris)]. John Webb, London; sold, Phillips, London, July 8–9, 1828, lot 70 as van der Spelt. George Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Duke of Sutherland (d. 1833), Stafford House, London [described by Passavant 1833]; by descent to George Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Duke of Sutherland, Stafford House, London (d. 1861) to at least 1854 [described by Waagen 1837 and 1854]. Vitale Bloch, Paris, by 1949; sold to Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.