Expertise Fred G Meijer from the Netherlands Institute for Arthistory RKD, The Hague (images no. 3343).

Provenance

• sale Sotheby’s New York, May 1995;
• to Richard Green, London, inventory cat. no.17, 1996, with determination of the various flowers; (advertised in Weltkunst 70, 2000, no. 5, with ill)
• exhibited at TEFAF, Maastricht, March 2002
• in sale Lempertz, Keulen, Nov. 2002
• with Adam Williams Fine Art Ltd., New York City, exhibited at TEFAF, Maastricht, March 2010;
• private collection, USA;
• private collection, Belgium.

Expertise Fred Meijer, RKD:

The German-born painter and art dealer Jacob Marrell was a pupil of the great Frankfurt still-life earliest Georg Flegel around 1627. By 1634 he had moved to Utrecht in the Netherlands, judging by one of his earliest dated works, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, signed ‘JACOBUS MARELLUS FECIT UTRECK 1634′. That still life of a flowervase demonstrates clearly that by then he had thoroughly studied works of the artists of the so-called Bosschaert dynasty working in Utrecht, specifically those of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger, whom he probably knew personally. The dead frog lying by the base of the vase in his Rijksmuseum still-life was a motif he copied from a small painting by Bosschaert which depicts only the frog. That work is now in the Frits Lugt collection (Fondation Custodia, Paris).

Marrell worked mainly in Utrecht until 1650, painting still lifes of flowers and of fruit which were firmly rooted in that city’ s artistic traditions, although he is known to have produced a Vanitas painting in Frankfurt in 1637. Beginning in the late 1640s, Marrell’s work also showed the influence of Jan Davidsz. de Heem; he occasionally copied or emulated that artist’s still lifes. Although Marrell eventually returned to Frankfurt, where he lived and worked from circa 1650, he is recorded as having made return trips to Utrecht and met de Heem as he is known to have introduced his pupil Abraham Mignon to that great artist.

Tulips were a favourite subject for Marrell. He usually assigned them a leading role in his flowerpieces and he also produced several tulip books or catalogues, one of which is in the Reichsprentenkabinet, Amsterdam. In the present flowerpiece, two large tulips constitute the weight of the composition and with their bright white and red they catch the strongest light in the picture. Thus, they attract the eye, which is guided downwards across the smaller flowers, along the sprig of lily-of-the-valley, towards the small-scale drama of the dragonfly being threatened by a the lizard – a reptile which is a common element in Marrell’s still lifes.

Similarly, the wide open poppy anemone facing the viewer in the centre of the bouquet is a recurrent feature in Marrell’s flowerpieces, but is rarely found in the work of other artists. The depth of the bouquet is enhanced by the presence of smaller, blueish and greyish flowers on the second plane, pushing the bright red and yellow flowers forward.

Even though Marrell regularly dated his still lifes, it is not easy to propose a secure date for many of his undated works, as his style does not appear to have developed along a clearly definable line. Rather dense bouquets like the present one appear to originate mainly from the 1640s. Marrell’s more loosely spaced flowerpieces of the late 1630s clearly precede this still life, whereas two equally dense flowerpieces from 1647 (a small panel with Richard Green Gallery in 1984 and a larger one with John

Mitchell & Son in the early 1990s, illustrated in Paul Taylor, Dutch Flower Painting 1600-1720) appear to represent a following step in the artist’s career, towards a type containing flowers

of a more ‘crisp’ appearance. Consequently, it seems most likely that the present still life dates from the mid-1640s. It can be compared with a larger flowerpiece of similar composition, signed in monogram and dated 1645 (with E Slatter Gallery, London; exhibition April-July 1956, no.22).