Advanced Search 
Still Life with Fruit and Shells
Balthasar van der Ast (Dutch, 1593 or 1594–1657)
about 1623–24
Medium/Technique
Oil on panel
Dimensions
13 3/4 x 21 1/2 in.
Credit Line
Museum purchase with funds donated by Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo
Accession Number2018.2109
OUT ON LOAN
On display at Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX, November 10, 2024 – February 9, 2025
On display at Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX, November 10, 2024 – February 9, 2025
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
This painting overflows with life, but also reminds of life’s fragility. There are fruits and flowers; butterflies and dragonflies; a caterpillar, spider, and lizard, as well as a veritable museum of shells from oceans around the world. It is a catalogue of the natural world, in varying states of freshness, decay, and, in the shells, beautiful death—all suspended in time by the artist’s meticulous brushwork.
This painting was once owned by W. G. Constable, curator of paintings at the MFA from 1938 to 1957. It’s tempting to imagine that Constable, who had come to Boston from London, was drawn to the work because it was previously owned by Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th-century novelist and prime minister of the United Kingdom.
This painting was once owned by W. G. Constable, curator of paintings at the MFA from 1938 to 1957. It’s tempting to imagine that Constable, who had come to Boston from London, was drawn to the work because it was previously owned by Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th-century novelist and prime minister of the United Kingdom.
Signed
Signed, lower left: B vander Ast
Provenance1881, Benjamin Disraeli (b. 1804 – d. 1881), 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, London; July 13, 1881, Beaconsfield estate sale, Christie, Manson, and Woods, London, lot 410, sold for £8.8 to “Lord Lewes,” William Nevill, 1st Marquess of Abergavenny and Earl of Lewes (b. 1826 – d. 1915), Eridge Castle, Sussex. About 1950s, Hallsborough Gallery, London. By 1960, Robert Grandjean (b. 1907 – d. 1996), Verviers, Belgium. Mrs. E. Hamilton-Brown, London. By 1966, John D. Constable (d. 2016), Cambridge and Sherborn, MA; 2018, sold by the estate of John Constable to the MFA. (Accession Date: September 26, 2018)