Lot 2053 Dα

Cornelis de Heem was born in Leiden in 1631 as the scion of a distinguished family of artists and the son of the famous still life painter Jan Davidsz de Heem. Cornelis received his first training as a painter in his father's studio in Antwerp. His name appears in the registers of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke as of 1660. This was followed by longer stays in other Dutch art centres such as Utrecht and the Hague. In the early 1680s he returned to Antwerp, where he remained until the end of his life.

His main focus was on still lifes of fruit, sometimes supplemented by flowers, other foods such as lobsters and oysters, and decorative tableware. In this case it is a Venetian glass, the lustre of which enlivens the darker background and echoes that of the silver plate in the foreground.
In his best works, Cornelis comes very close to his father. In the present painting with its detailed berries and fruits, some of which are cut to display the juicy flesh, he also pays homage to his father with the large sunflower, which appears very often in Jan Davidz's paintings from the late Antwerp period.