Oil on panel
Monogrammed and dated: “PC. 1649” center right.

‍

Provenance:

• Anonymous sale, Sotheby & Co, London, 20 February 1974, lot 24.
• At Richard Green, London, in 1975 (according to the RKD - Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis).
• Leegenhoek, Paris, circa 1980 (according to N. R. A. Vroom, 1980, op. cit. infra).
• Private collection from the Paris region.

‍

The Artist

Pieter Claesz was one of the preeminent still-life painters of the Dutch Golden Age, active primarily in Haarlem. Alongside Willem Claeszoon Heda, he pioneered the genre of the monochrome banketje (breakfast piece), working with a restricted tonal palette and subtle interplay of light to elevate ordinary table settings into meditative, almost spiritual compositions.

‍

The Artwork

Though lacking overt memento mori symbols like skulls or extinguished candles, this panel gently suggests the brevity of pleasure through more subtle signs, half-eaten bread, a partially drained glass, cracked nuts, and the perishability of berries. The inclusion of the smoked herring, common in Northern fare, grounds the work in daily life, bridging the luxurious and the humble.

Claesz’s preference for monochromatic harmony is evident here, though the red touches of the berries bring delicate variation. Claesz’s ontbijtgens or ontbijtjes (breakfast pieces) were never merely decorative. Unlike earlier, more exuberant still lifes intended to show wealth and abundance, Claesz’s works appeal to the viewer’s inner life: a quiet invitation to savour the modest beauty of the everyday, and to remember that all things, however beautiful, are temporary.

‍