Jean François VAN DAEL
(Antwerp, 1764 – Paris, 1840)
Grapes, peaches, and plums on an entablature
Oil on canvas
Signed lower left on the entablature
62 x 51 cm
Jean-François (Jan-Frans) Van Dael is one of the most important still life painters of the period 1790-1840.
After a brief training at the Antwerp Academy, he won a first prize in Architecture in 1785, which allowed him to go to Paris the following year, already being described as a "flower painter". However, it was only as a decorator and trompe-l'oeil specialist that he made his debut in France, notably on the construction sites of the châteaux of Saint-Cloud, Bellevue and Chantilly.
It seems that he then received lessons from the Dutchman Gérard Van Spaendonck (1746-1822), an established artist and great specialist in still life and botanical subjects, who arrived in Paris in 1770.
Van Dael's reputation quickly grew, and he was given accommodation at the Louvre from 1793, the year of his first participation in the Salon; he thus appears in Boilly's painting of 1798 which represents the principal artists of the time, gathered in the studio of Jean-Baptiste Isabey.
He obtained commissions from the best society, as well as from successive sovereigns of France for nearly forty years, and the two empresses Joséphine and Marie-Louise acquired several of his paintings; his compositions "were paid for with gold" reports Paul Marmottan. The various regimes awarded him numerous prizes and awards, crowned by the Legion of Honor in 1825.
Alongside Van Pol and Van Os, Van Dael continued in France the great tradition of Dutch still life from de Heem to Van Huysum, bringing a neo-classical touch: flowers and/or fruits placed on stone or marble entablatures, with neutral and simple backgrounds. Marmottan even judges him to be more careful than Van Spaendonck in the details.
At the heart of the more general craze for pastoral subjects, Van Dael sometimes collaborated with other artists such as Piat-Joseph Sauvage or Antoine Chazal, and above all ran a studio, with many female students. This studio, located at the Sorbonne (where he lived between 1806 and 1817), is thus represented in the painting of the Salon of 1817 by his compatriot Van Bree.
Our sober but very present composition, which offers a harmonious blend of rusticity, gluttony and refinement, evokes the end of summer. It tastefully brings together a few peaches with velvety skin, a magnificent bunch of white grapes still hanging on its vine and a branch of large purple plums, resting on a cabbage leaf; a gastropod brings an amusing animal presence. The realism of the whole is further accentuated by the drops of water.
Stylistically, our painting can be compared to works produced around 1810, notably an oil on panel (53×43 cm) dated 1809, held at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow (sale on 08/12/2011, Sotheby's London, €110,000).
The signature in capital letters, engraved in marble, can be found in the Still Life with Flowers and Fruit (oil on canvas, 1.07 x 0.82 m) held at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.
Among the museums holding works by Van Dael: Louvre, Hermitage of Saint Petersburg, Pushkin, Melbourne, Florence, Fitzwilliam Museum of Cambridge, Malmaison, Château de Fontainebleau, Château de Compiègne, Lyon, Rouen, Orléans, Lille…