Johannes Hannot - Flower Still Life with Roses and Tulips in a Glass Vase on a Stone Slab - image-1

Lot 2079 Dα

Johannes Hannot - Flower Still Life with Roses and Tulips in a Glass Vase on a Stone Slab

Auction 1153 - overview Cologne
30.05.2020, 11:00 - Fine Art
Estimate: 35.000 € - 40.000 €

Johannes Hannot

Flower Still Life with Roses and Tulips in a Glass Vase on a Stone Slab

Oil on panel. 54 x 40.5 cm.
Monogrammed and dated lower left: IH (conjoined) 166[?] (last number indistinct, possibly dated later).

The oeuvre of the Leiden painter Johannes Hannot appears comparatively small today. This is due in part to the fact that many of his works were attributed in the past to Jan Davidsz de Heem. In some cases, his signature was even painted over or changed to look like that of de Heem, for example the signatures of the two still lifes by Hannot in the LVR-LandesMuseum in Bonn and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille. The JH monogram of the present work was also at some point amended to read JDH for “Jan Davidsz de Heem”, but this was thankfully reversed during restoration.
Thus this piece, long considered to be a work by de Heems, can today be assigned to its actual author, the artist Johannes Hannot, about whose biography very little is known. Hannot's stylistic closeness to both de Heem and to Pieter de Ring, also active in Leiden, indicate that he may have been taught by one of these artists, but there is no archival evidence to support this. Hannot primarily painted still lifes of fruit, glasses, porcelain, shrimps and prawns arranged on a table. Some fruit, such as the artist's characteristic cherries, can also be seen in this work, but the focus lies on the sumptuous bouquet of roses and tulips. It is one of very few known flower still lifes by Hannot.
The back of the work bears a seal and a label from the Galerie Jacques Goudstikker in Amsterdam along with an early inventory number. It was exhibited as a work of Jan Davidsz de Heem at the important exhibition of still lifes curated by Goudstikker in his Amsterdam gallery in 1933. The piece is not listed in Goudstikker's “Black Book”, the record of works in the Jewish gallerist's inventory which he was forced to leave behind upon fleeing to England from Amsterdam in 1940. The piece is sold with a confirmation from Jacques Goudstikker's heirs that they place no restitution claims on this work.

Provenance

Collection of Siegfried Buchenau, Niendorf, Schleswig-Holstein (attributed to Jan Davidsz de Heem). – Jacques Goudstikker art dealers, Amsterdam, inv. no. 892 (attributed to Jan Davidsz de Heem) (with gallery label and red varnish seal on the back of the panel). - Auctioned by Koller, Zurich, 20.-21.05.1977, lot 5175 (attributed to Jan Davidsz de Heem) (mentioning a now no longer available expertise by Walther Bernt). - Auctioned by Koller, Zurich, 18.03.1999, lot 130 (attributed to circle of Jan Davidsz de Heem).

Exhibitions

Het Stilleven, Amsterdam, Kunsthandel J. Goudstikker, 18.02.-19.03.1933, no. 142 (attributed to Jan Davidsz de Heem).