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News Item: 00091
21st Sep 2009
Newly-Discovered Still Lifes by Adriaen Coorte to be auctioned
Source: http://www.sothebys.com
Both works have recently re-emerged on to the market having been hidden away in a Dutch family collection for more than a century. The owner found them in a cupboard, and curious to see if they had any value, called Martine Lambrechtsen of Sotheby's in Amsterdam, and described them to her. Realising their likely importance, Martine immediately made an appointment to go and see the works and was, within a few hours of receiving the call, able to confirm that they are indeed masterpieces by one of Holland's most intriguing Masters. Works by Adriaen Coorte - a painter of outstanding quality and originality - are rare to the market, and few museums possess his works. At the time of the major Adriaen Coorte exhibition in the Mauritshuis in Den Haag last year, only 64 paintings were known of him, to which these two pictures are major additions. The two paintings - one entitled Still life of a peach and two apricots and the other Still life of strawberries in an earthenware bowl - are highly representative of Coorte's simple and distinctive style and they come to auction in fine, untouched condition. One is dated 1692 and the other is probably slightly later, and like the majority of Coorte's work they were painted on paper and later glued to panel. The 1692 painting is the artist's earliest known dated work on paper. Of all the still life painters of the Dutch Golden Age, Coorte is the most enigmatic, as well as one of the most loved by modern collectors. Towards the end of the 17th century and into the early part of the 18th century he seems to have worked in complete isolation in the city of Middelburg in Zeeland, the same region where the Dutch family who discovered the painting originates from. Sotheby's Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 30, Amsterdam 1083 HJ |
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