Lot 8. Osias Beert (Antwerp 1580-1623), A pewter plate of walnuts and hazelnuts, a glass of red wine, and a butterfly on a table top, oil on panel, unframed, 22.8 x 30.9 cm. Price realised USD 252,000 (Estimate USD 100,000 – USD 150,000). © Christies 2024

Provenance: Private Collection, South America, from whom acquired by the present owner.

Note: Osias Beert is distinguished among a pioneering group of still-life painters working in Antwerp during the seventeenth century and was instrumental in the development of table-top still lifes. This hitherto unpublished work is an exciting addition to Beert’s oeuvre, as his paintings usually depict a number of still-life motifs arranged in a dense and often highly geometric composition. The present work displays just a few elements, a silver plate with nuts, a glass of wine, and a butterfly that has landed near scattered hazelnut husks. The artist seldom signed his works, and only a handful of paintings on copper have been securely dated using panel makers' marks. Fred G. Meijer has suggested that the present still life should be dated to circa 1610, based on a compositionally similar painting, on the same scale (fig. 1), now in a private collection (private communication, 19 October 2023).

Little is known of Beert’s artistic training, although he is recorded in the workshop of the otherwise unknown artist Andris van Baseroo. He joined the Antwerp painter’s guild in 1602 and took on his first pupils shortly after. It is clear from his extant works that he frequently reused elements to invent new compositions. The plate of nuts in the present work, for instance, appears in a few other paintings: one, datable to 1610, incorporates the plate of nuts into a larger still life, while another employs a similar configuration for both the plate of hazelnuts and the butterfly (both examples are in private collections).

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs, and for suggesting a date of circa 1610 (private communication, 19 October 2023).

Christie's. Old Masters, New York, 31 january 2024