“Zomerschoon” or “Summer Beauty”
The Mauritshuis has acquired Vase with a Single Tulip by Balthasar van der Ast. This still life from 1625 is a rare painting showing only one flowering tulip. And it’s a very small painting, 27x20cm. Watercolor drawings with the one flower have been preserved in full, such as in tulip albums for bulb growers. In contrast, only two Dutch paintings with a single tulip are known from the 17th century.
Vase with a Single Tulip (1625), Balthasar van der Ast (Dutch, 1593 – 1657), 27x20cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague.
First documented in the eighteenth century in the collection of Johan van der Linden van Slingelandt (1701 – 1782), this is a much celebrated still life by Balthasar van der Ast, remarkable for its minimalist conception, featuring just a single flower. The composition is beautifully and simply arranged. A Zomerschoon (Summer Beauty) tulip stands in a small glass vase with a gilded neck and foot, placed just off centre in the panel, on a brown stone ledge. A small Adonis blue butterfly (Polyommatus bellargus ) has alighted on one of the flower’s leaves while a fly crawls along the ledge below, and we see three small drops of water against the dark leaf and background.
Van der Ast’s panel portrays nothing of the frantic atmosphere of speculation and competition in which it was created. The “Tulip Mania,” which swept the Netherlands during the 1620s and ‘30s, saw the fervid importation, production and sale of countless varieties of tulips as the emerging wealthy merchant class sought to own and grow new, strikingly colored types of the flower. At the peak of the mania, some of the flowers themselves cost more than their painted versions. In the boom year of 1637, particularly desired tulip bulbs could sell for 100–300 guilders, while a painting of flowers by Van der Ast was only about 39 guilders. So-called “broken” tulips (those infected with the virus which gave them their variegated colors) were the most popular new varieties. The Zomerschoon, usually consisting of red or pink streaks on a white or cream petal, was highly sought after and commanded exorbitant prices. It remains one of the few varieties of tulip cultivated in Holland in the seventeenth century that exist today.
Earlier in the painting’s provenance, it was auctioned at Christie’s, on December 8, 2016 for GBP 809,000 (Estimate GBP 300,000 – GBP 500,000).
To prepare his still lifes, Van der Ast made a sort of library of over 800 drawings of individual species of flowers, seashells and some insects, which he kept in his studio. The sheets are characterized by a number placed in the bottom left corner, as well as a calligraphic inscription naming the flower or seashell, and Balthasar van der Ast’s monogram in the bottom right corner. The largest group, consisting of 71 sheets, is housed in a folder at the Fondation Custodia, Paris. Van der Ast may have used this catalog for buyers when ordering a still life painting with flowers and shells, like buying a bouquet of flowers.
Shortly after 1600, flower still lifes emerged as a new genre in Dutch paintings, featuring a bouquet of blooming flowers. Rare and exotic species were favorites, such as the tulip. With these, painters created impossible bouquets; in reality, the various flowers could never all bloom at the same time.
Balthasar van der Ast was taught by his brother-in-law Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573 – 1621), the pioneering flower painter of the first decades of the seventeenth century. Works in which a choice number of blooms and a few shells are placed on a ledge with flying insects, are an innovation of Van der Ast. He is not afraid to pose his flowers in unexpected ways, for example the roses placed face-down on the ledge, the better to appreciate the ruffles of the petals.
The shells in these paintings are also collectors’ items, important elements of the cabinets of curiosities that became popular in the seventeenth century. They reflect increasing interest in the natural world and the trading and colonial voyages of Dutch sailors, who took the shells as souvenirs with them from the Far East and West.
The painter Balthasar van der Ast (born in Middelburg, 1593) was raised by his older sister Maria. She was married to flower still life painter Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, who became Van der Ast’s teacher and introduced him to flower still lifes. In 1619, Balthasar van der Ast enrolled as a master painter in the Utrecht St. Luke’s Guild. At that time, the city of Utrecht was the center for flower still life art. Roelant Savery – about whom an exhibition will be on display at the Mauritshuis in spring 2024 – also worked here. Savery had a great influence on the development of Van der Ast, who made his use of color his own. In addition, Balthasar van der Ast had the advantage of being able to study various types of flowers at Savery’s home in Utrecht, as this painter owned his own garden with exotic flowers and plants.
At Tefaf in 2004, this still life by Balthasar van der Ast was found, that had gone missing from the Suermondt Ludwig Museum in Aachen in 1945. The painting finally made its way back to the museum in 2017.
The specific relevant content for this request, if necessary, delimited with characters: As many works of art belonging to the city of Aachen, the painting was taken to the Albrechtsburg in Meißen in 1942, since that area was supposed to be safe with regard to air raids. The American army withdrew in the summer of 1945 and left the area to the Soviet authorities. The fate of the Van der Ast from Aachen remained obscure, since the storage in the Albrechtsburg was to be heavily plundered by the Red Army and many pieces would end up in the Soviet Union. The Van der Ast still life, however, was not among these. It’s thought that a German lady working for the Soviet secret police had stolen the paintings from the Albrechtsburg. Afterwards, she had fled to Berlin and worked for the American forces, which enabled her to immigrate to the US and from there into Canada. With her, she brought twelve paintings, at least ten of them from the Aachen Suermondt-Museum. Over time, most of these paintings got dispersed and disappeared, but not the Van der Ast. Only recently, the negotiations have led to a proposal by the City of Aachen. The current owner agreed to return the painting to Aachen for a finder’s fee.
Two Van der Ast paintings are still missing according to the German Lost Art Foundation database.
An inventory of 1632 confirms the presence of this still life in the collection of Princess Amalia van Solms, wife of Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange. By the early 1630s, Frederik Hendrik and Amalia van Solms had formed an important collection of contemporary Dutch and Flemish paintings. Their taste led them to collect mythological and allegorical paintings as well as princely portraits. The inventory of their possessions made in 1632 lists only four still lifes, of which “two small paintings in ebony frames, one a basket with fruit and the other a basket with flowers, by Van der Ast.”