Jakob Samuel Beck
Vegetable Still Life with a Rabbit
Vegetable Still Life with a Guinea Pig
Oil on canvas. 53.5 x 89.5 cm and 53.5 x 90 cm.
These two exceptional counterparts have been in private ownership for many years. They were made known to a wider audience as an important new discovery in 2015/16 on the occasion of the exhibition in Erfurt celebrating the 300th birthday of the Erfurt painter Jacob Samuel Beck.
Typical of Beck's still lifes is the precise, quasi-scientific view of nature's world of forms and colours. Beck chose to paint particularly elongated pictures that offer as much space as possible for the presentation of various cruciferous vegetables and artichokes, which spread out as opulent leafy landscapes. On them is an unusual variety of insects, painted true to life. There are two fireflies (in front of the kohlrabi), two butterflies, a small tortoiseshell and a six-spot burnet, a common birch beetle (in front of the asparagus) and a cockchafer, among others. The muted colour palette with silvery-grey green tones, the contrasting light and also the unusual variety of insects distinguish the two pendants from other still lifes by Beck and make them stand out.
Provenance
Dorothea Schenke 1930. - Dr Albert Rapp, Frankfurt a. M. (cousin of D. Schenke), Eleonore Rapp (sister of A. Rapp), 1969. - German private collection since 1975.
Literature
Exhib. cat. "Jacob Samuel Beck - Zum 300. Geburtstag des Erfurter Malers", ed. by Thomas von Taschitzki et al., Dresden 2016, p. 245, cat. no. 55, cat. no. 56, ill. p. 203.
Exhibitions
Jacob Samuel Beck - Zum 300. Geburtstag des Erfurter Malers, Angermuseum Erfurt, 18th October 2015 - 17th January 2016.