Flower Still Life - Attributed to Frans Ykens

Attributed to Frans Ykens
Antwerp, 1601 – Antwerp, 1692/93

A Still Life of a Bouquet with Lilies, Roses and Tulips in a Glass Vase on a Wooden Ledge

Oil on panel, with the Antwerp Guild mark on the reverse
H. 80 cm. W. 56 cm.

PROVENANCE
Anonymous sale, 19 November, 2011, as after Daniël Seghers (1590 – 1661);
With Xavier Scheidwimmer, Munich, exhibited at TEFAF, Maastricht, March 2012, as by Frans Ykens (1601 – 1693);
Private collection, Germany


The present composition relates to a Flower Still Life of similar dimensions by Daniël Seghers (1590 – 1661), oil on panel, signed ‘D.Seger . Soc. Gesus’ and dated ‘1635’, which used to be in the collection of Bernheimer-Colnaghi, Munich/London (RKD nr. 114727). The Seghers version includes butterflies and insects. The present work was formerly in the collection of Xavier Scheidwimmer, Munich, as by the Antwerp Master Frans Ykens, who was influenced by and on various occasions collaborated with Seghers. The reverse of the panel shows a clover leaf or trefoil panel makers mark, possibly of Michiel Claessens (active 1590 – 1637). Ykens returned from France to Antwerp in 1630, the same year he became a free master in the city’s Guild of Saint Luke. As such, the present painting can be placed in Antwerp, in the middle of the 1630s, around the time the Seghers version was painted.