Lot 21. Jacques Linard (Troyes 1597 - 1645 Paris), Still life of shells and coral on a table draped with a green cloth, oil on oak panel, with a prepared reverse, 37.6 x 60.2 cm.; 14¾ x 23⅝ in. Lot sold: 352,800 GBP (Estimate: 200,000 - 300,000 GBP). © Sotheby's. 

Provenance: Acquired by the father of the present owner, probably in Europe in the 1950s;

Thence by inheritance.

Note: Jacques Linard’s importance as a pioneer of still-life painting in France in the first half of the seventeenth century was only recognised in modern times when his work was shown in Charles Sterling’s ground-breaking exhibition Les peintres de réalité in Paris in 1934. Since then, he has come to be recognised alongside Sebastian Stosskopf (1597–1657), Lubin Baugin (c. 1612–1663) and Louise Moillon (1610–1696) as the most important of the painters who developed still-life painting in Paris from the 1620s onwards. Like them his style was influenced by the works of contemporary Netherlandish painters, and is marked by a very particular delicacy of execution, coupled with an elegant austerity of composition – memorably described by Pierre Rosenberg as a ‘poésie mélancolique’ – that is distinctively French.¹ Linard was received as Master in Paris in 1626 and appointed ‘Peintre et Valet de Chambre du Roi’ in 1631, suggesting a fairly rapid degree of recognition for his work.² Despite this, his work is now rare, with fewer than fifty paintings by him currently known, with dates ranging from 1624 to 1644. This previously unrecorded shell still-life is closely related to another panel preserved in the Fondation Custodia in Paris, in which almost the same selection of exotic shells is found. Such shells were brought to Europe from the Pacific regions by the merchant vessels of the Netherlands and were avidly collected for their beauty and rarity. Often displayed in cabinets of ‘curiosities’ they were extremely expensive and in the Low Countries they eventually became, like tulip bulbs, the subjects of ill-judged financial speculation, and their buyers mocked as schelpenzotten or ‘shell-fools’.

Although like many of Linard’s works, this previously unrecorded panel is neither signed nor dated, it can be closely compared with a small number of extant still-lifes of shells by him, with dated examples ranging from 1624(?) to 1640.³ Much the closest of these is the Still-life of shells and coral in the Fondation Custodia (Frits Lugt Collection) in Paris (fig. 1).⁴ The two works can be distinguished only by the addition of two shells on the extreme right of the Paris panel, the interchanging of the two largest shells on the left of the composition, and by changes to the branches of the two pieces of coral. Technical examination of the Paris panel has shown that Linard had originally planned to set the shells on a grey (?stone) ledge running the width of the composition, but that he changed his mind and instead used a tapering green tabletop as in the present painting.⁵ Interestingly, the two panels also share the same distinctive chalk-glue preparation on their reverse (fig. 2). Although they lack his maker’s stamp, these are characteristic of the panels made for export to Paris by the Fleming Melchior de Bout (fl. 1625/6–1658) in Antwerp for other painters such as Willem Kalf, Sebastian Stosskopf and Willem van Aelst.⁶ By coincidence, both the panels were formerly attributed to Middleburg-born painter Balthasar van der Ast (1593/4–1656), considered by many to be the finest of the Netherlandish painters of shell still-lifes, and whose works in this vein may perhaps have influenced French painters like Linard and Stosskopf. The two pieces of coral and many of the principal shells in the present picture also recur in a larger canvas, listed by Nusbaumer among works of indeterminate status, where they flank a chipwood box surmounted by an arrangement of flowers in a glass vase.⁷ 

fig. 1. Jacques Linard, Still life with shells and coral, oil on panel, 47 x 64 cm. Fondation Custodia (Frits Lugt Collection), Institut Néerlandais, Paris. © Wikimedia

Fig. 2 The reverse of the present lot, showing the chalk-glue preparation.

It was not uncommon for Linard to paint more than one version of a composition, sometimes many years apart. The composition of his youthful Still-life with shells and a chipwood box painted in 1624(?) now in a private collection, for example, was repeated by him in 1640 on another panel of similar size, sold New York, Sotheby’s, 22 May 1992, lot 28.⁸ Other repeated compositions were seemingly painted in the same year, such as the two versions of his Still-life of a basket of plums and peaches with watermelons of 1642, the former last seen on the Paris art market in 1972, the latter now in the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle.⁹ The attribution of the present panel to Linard has been endorsed by Fred G. Meijer on the basis of digital images. As he observes, it is difficult to suggest a specific dating for the present painting. If the panel itself was indeed made by Melchior de Bout then it cannot date from before 1625, and the picture may be more likely to date closer to 1640, at a time when de Bout was an established supplier of panels to Paris, and the year from which we have at least two dated examples of shell still-lifes by Linard.

In this composition Linard brings his full powers of refinement and detailed observation to bear upon his exotic and expensive subjects. Red or ‘precious’ coral would have been familiar to his viewers, and had long been valued for its colour and used as a charm or in jewellery. The shells are all treated individually and arranged with an elegant economy against a plain dark background and simple green table in order to set off their colours and markings. Most of the shells depicted are from the Far East. They are, from left to right: Spondylus gaederopus (Mediterranean); Conus generalis (Indo-Pacific); Achatinia weynsi (Congo); Tonna-Perdix-Dolium (Indo-Pacific); Strombus gigas juvenile (Caribbean); Mitra mitra (Indo-Pacific); Turbo marmoratus or marbled turban (Indo-Pacific); Conus magus(?) (Indo-Pacific); Murex stainforthi (Western Australia); Hippopus Hippopus (Indo-Pacific); Conus litteratus (Indo-Pacific); Conus Aulicus (Indo-Pacific); Turbo marmoratus (Indo-Pacific); Mitra papalis or papal mitre (Indo-Pacific); and behind them two examples of Corallium or red and white coral. Many of these recur in other shell still-lifes by Linard, for example the two related panels of 1624 and 1640, and they may therefore have been the personal possessions of the painter or a court patron. Their common origins suggest that most of the shells would have been imported through the Dutch East India Company and thence to Paris by way of Amsterdam. A very charming small panel painted by Linard, signed and inscribed ‘1638 à Paris’ and preserved today in the Kunsthaus in Zurich gives us a glimpse of how these precious collector’s items were stored and displayed. Eight shells are shown arranged in and around a small inlaid Boulle cabinet set in a typically stark interior on a tabletop covered with a similar green covering to that in the present painting.¹⁰ It was not just the Dutch who were prepared to pay enormous sums to collect such rarities. At a sale at Saint-Germain in 1627 a collection of shells fetched 20,000 livres, among them a prize Spondylus gaederopus similar to that seen in the present painting for which the young Gaston d’Orléans (1608–1660), brother of Louis XIII of France and an avid collector, paid 900 livres alone.¹¹

¹ P. Rosenberg in La peinture française du XVIIe siècle dans les collections americaines, exh. cat., Paris, New York and Chicago 1982, p. 275.

² For the most recent reconstruction of Linard’s career see M. Szanto, ‘Pour Jacques Linard, peintre de natures mortes (Troyes 1597–Paris 1645)’, in Bulletin de la Societé de l’Histoire de L’Art français, 2001, pp. 25–61.

³ The date on the first of these, now preserved in a private collection, has an indistinct last digit, which has been read as 1621. However, as Linard was only received (réçu) as Mâitre (Master) in Paris in 1626, the later reading may be more plausible.

⁴ Inv. no. 27-99. Panel, 47 x 64 cm. P. Nusbaumer, Jacques Linard 1597–1645. Catalogue de l’œuvre peint, Le Pecq-sur-Seine 2006, p. 124, no. 45, reproduced. See also P. Rosenberg, ‘Jacques Linard, ‘Peintre de Coquilles’, in Napoli, L’Europa. Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte in onore di Ferdinando Bologna, F. Abbate and F. Sricchia Santoro (eds), Catanzaro 1995, pp. 231–34. Formerly attributed to Balthasar van der Ast, the attribution to Linard was first proposed by Sam Segal in A Prosperous Past, the Sumptuous Still Life in the Netherlands 1600–1700, exh. cat., Delft, Cambridge (Mass) and Fort Worth 1988, pp. 88 and 213 n. 31.

⁵ Conservation report by Sarah Walden, dated 28 April 1995 and kindly shared by Cécile Tainturier at the Fondation Custodia.

⁶ For a stamped panel with similar preparation see the Christ with the woman taken in adultery from the studio of Simon Vouet sold Paris, Sotheby’s, 26 June 2019, lot 85. For De Bout see A. Koopstra, ‘De Antwerpse ‘witter ende paneelmaker’ Melchior de Bout (werkzaam 1625/6–1658): leverancier van ‘ready-made’ panelen voor de Parijse markt’, in Oud Holland, vol. 123, no.2, 2010, pp. 108–24.

⁷ Canvas, 71 x 51.5 cm. Reproduced by Nusbaumer 2006, p. 137, fig. 9 under ‘tableaux sur lesquels nous ne pouvons nous prononcer’.

⁸ Nusbaumer 2006, pp. 34, 80, nos 2 and 25, both reproduced.

⁹ Nusbaumer 2006, pp. 86–89, nos 28 and 29, both reproduced.

¹⁰ Panel, 23 x 31 cm. Inv. no. 1999/0007, Gift of Annette Bühler. See C. Klemm, ‘In Paris malt 1638 Jacques Linard eine Sammlung von Meerschnecken’, in Jahresbericht Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, 1999, pp. 71–74.

¹¹ A. Schnapper, Le Géant, la licorne et la tulipe. Collections et collectionneurs français dans la France du XVIIe siècle, Paris 1988, I. Cited by Rosenberg 1995, p. 233.

Sotheby's. Old Masters Evening Sale, London, 8 December 2021