10.600 €
A flowered vase on a ledge with a lizard, a dragonfly and a snail
Oil on panel : 64,2 X 52,2 cm
Signed and dated bottom right JSHorst. Fecit. 166,”
(the J, S and H are intertwined; as to the last digit it might be read as a 2, but it most probably is a 4)
Frame : 89,7 X 78,1 cm
Provenance : formerly in Düsseldorf, in the Werner Dahl collection.
I would like to thank Fred Meijer for confirming the attribution. The expert also describes our painting in “The Ashmolean Museum Oxford. Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Paintings”, 2003, P. 275
Absolute transparency: our cost price = 5.890 €
= acquisition price 5.715 € + shipment 175 €
I bought this painting at auction, where, for an incomprehensible reason, it had remained unsold with an estimate of just 6.000 - 10.000 €. To my utter surprise my after sale bid was accepted.
Our export price 9.783 €
About J. van Slechtenhorst
Dutch painter, active during the third quarter of the 17th century
Painter of flower still lifes.
Apparently there are only five other paintings known by our mysterious painter. Three are dated: 1662, 1668 and 1670. Only two of these are fully signed “J. van Slechtenhorst”: one was sold at Glerum, The Hague 4/02/91, the second one was with Gallery P. de Boer in Amsterdam in 1934 (of that painting exists only a description, no photograph). The other paintings are monogrammed, as ours “JSL Horst”. In the past the 17th century S was erroneously read as an F, hence the identification as J. van Flechtenhorst.
There is no J. van Slechtenhorst recorded in any Painter’s Guild in the Dutch Republic, nor in any Utrecht archives during the second half of the 17th century.
Judging by the style of his flower still lifes our painter must have been active in Utrecht, where he was influenced by Ambrosius Bosschaert II (1606 – 1645) and by Jacob Marrel (1613/14 – 1681). Marrel was born in Germany, in Frankenthal, but he was active in Utrecht between 132 and 1650, thereafter in Frankfurt, where Abraham Mignon was his pupil. Marrel returned on several occasions to Utrecht, possibly in 1659, 1664 and 1669, when he also dealt in tulip bulbs.
Could our still life painter be the same person as a landscape painter active in Rotterdam, who signed with “Slechtenhorst” three landscapes recorded in 1679 in a Rotterdam inventory? Another landscape signed “SL Horst and dated 1668 surfaced onto the London art market in February 1981.
Why should you buy this painting?
Because we are offering this beautiful, typical Utrecht still life from the middle / third quarter of the 17th century at a very affordable price.
Comparative paintings
Click photos for more details
