[A Flower Piece with vase, birds' nest and eggs; & A Flower Piece with vase, peaches and grapes]

Book Description

[Vienna: 1806]. Mezzotints, on wove paper, by J. P. Pichler. Proof before letters, the second signed in the plate `Jan Van Huisium fec.' (margins skillfully strengthened on verso).19 7/8 x 15 1/8 inches approx. 24 3/8 x 18 inches, and smaller. Gilt frame. A very rare pair of proof mezzotints after the work of Jan van Huysum: the 'last of the great Dutch masters' (Mitchell), the `Phoenix of Flower Painters' (Weyerman) "It is the fate of some painters to be celebrated in their lifetime only and to be disregarded by later generations... Other painters pass their lives in obscurity only to be acclaimd by a succeeding century. A few, a very few, achieve a fame which is universal in their own day, never falters, and remains unchanged today. Jan van Huysum is among them. To Weyerman.. Van Huysum was the 'phoenix of Flower Painters'. To Vertue, writing of six paintings he saw in an Englsih collection in the 1740s, they were 'the most inimitable pictures that were ever seen'. In Van Huysum's lifetime the Kings of Poland and Prussia, the Elector of Saxony, Prince William of Hesse, the Dukes of Orleans and Mecklenburg, and Sir Robert Walpole were eager patrons. When Catherine the Great, thirty years after Van Huysum's death, wanted to buy the Walpole Collection, the greatest in England, a valuation was made by Benjamin West...on the evidence of saleroom results at the time he placed a fair valuation of 1200 pounds on the pair of Van Huysums... In the nineteenth century the Rothschilds and others were avid collectors... Today the very finest Van Huysums are not available... the only fair way to judge an artist is by assessing his success in what he set out to achieve. By such a yardstick Van Huysum is supremely successful... Jan, born at Amsterdam in 1682, was the eldest son and pupil of Justus van Huysum. Justus was the head of a family enterprise... with three younger sons assisting: Justus the younger, Jacob and Michiel. Their large-scale production met the demand for decorative flowerpieces... Jan did not choose to follow his father's example. From his marriage in 1704 until his death in 1749 Jan appears to have stayed in Amsterdam, but independent of the family. He jealously guarded his success... working in strict privacy that none might see the preparation of his pigments nor how he worked... He is said to have worked from the real flower and gone to Haarlem each summer to study specimens.... Van Huysum possessed an unerring elegance of composition which enabled him to avoid the inbalance, the over-abundance that others risked... The artist left no word, no indication of how he really painted, no hint of his own philosophy. So the wondrous skills of Jan Van Huysum, the last of the great Dutch masters, leaves us as bemused as those of his predecessors a century and a half earlier." (Peter Mitchell European Flower Painters pp.142-149). This pair of exquisitely accomplished mezzotints was done by Johann Peter Pichler (1765-1806) and printed in Vienna. According to Delaborde, "his [Pichler's] fruit and flower pieces after van Huysum rival the materpieces of Earlom after the same painter." This statement is quite true, however , examples of Pichler's pair are considerably more scarce, and, of course, proofs before letters virtually unique. Delaborde, p. 307; British Museum Collection items 1861.1109. 113 & 114; Hollstein 24 (after Huysum); Pichler 36

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