Hubert van Ravesteyn hailed from Dordrecht, a bustling harbor city south of Rotterdam. He started out as a painter of fruit and vegetable still lifes and barn interiors. In the 1660s, he made the leap to elegant tobacco still lifes, highlighting a lucrative commodity newly introduced from the Americas. This painting belongs to a group of about six depicting smoking implements placed on a marble table. The other versions can be found in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Kunsthalle Bremen; Mansion House, London; the Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent; and a private collection. In this fine example dated 1670, Ravesteyn combines a Chinese porcelain bowl filled with walnuts with a stoneware jug, a tall glass, a long-stemmed pipe, and a tobacco wrapper. The various items allowed Ravesteyn to display his skill in rendering different materials, from the velvety tablecloth to the wonderful sheen of the white wine jug. The tobacco package’s inscription reads “Orientael/Vergini Taback/tot Dordrecht by Marschel/A 1670.” “Orientael” highlights its exotic appeal while “Vergini” references the superior Virginia tobacco, which was grown on English plantations by enslaved laborers. The words “tot Dordrecht by Marschael” indicate the city and name of the tobacco seller Gerrit Marschael who was listed in Dordrecht in 1671. The wrapper’s image of a Black man holding a long-stemmed pipe recalls the imagery of hundreds of tobacco papers that have survived from the 17th and 18th centuries. This stereotype of the contented African smoker projected an ideal of Dutch colonial prosperity completely at odds with the harsh realities of plantation slavery.

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