Balthasar van der Ast

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vase
Fruit basket with Chinese bowls

Balthasar van der Ast (* 1593 or 1594 in Middelburg , Netherlands , † March 7, 1657 in Delft ) was a Dutch painter of still lifes .

Life

When his father Hans died as a wealthy widower in 1609, Balthasar van der Ast moved in with his older sister Maria, who was married to the flower painter Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573–1621). Bosschaert's influence can be clearly felt in van der Ast's early works.

No later than the year 1619, he lived in Utrecht , where he worked in the Guild of St. Luke was taken. It is believed that Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606–1683 / 1684) was his pupil.

Balthasar van der Ast lived in Delft from 1632 on and married his wife Margrieta there in 1633. The couple had two daughters named Maria and Helena.

He died in Delft in December 1657 and was buried there in the Oude Kerk , the "old church".

plant

Balthasar van der Ast specialized in his painting mainly on the depiction of flowers, fruits and snail shells, which he depicted in mostly small-format pictures. His compositions are often enlivened by insects , sometimes also by lizards .

The Chinese bowls, which were coveted in his time and which came into the possession of wealthy Dutch people due to the flourishing trade with East Asia, he painted with great care and attention to detail (see pictures).

Some of the insects, beetles , flies and other small animals have a symbolic function. The delicate butterfly suggests the rapid perishability of the flowers, while other insects are supposed to point out the perishability of the fruit.

In his flower paintings , van der Ast did not always stick to the seasons : on various occasions he depicted flowers together in one picture that did not bloom at the same time.

Trivia

In January 2016 it became known that a painting by the painter that had been lost for decades was accidentally rediscovered in a private household in Bonn. The still life with a tulip, butterfly and fly from 1625 is entitled Tulip Sommerschön and has been considered lost since the mid-1980s after an exhibition in Münster. The Bonn art agent Christian-Frederik Plötz and the Bornheim jeweler Susanne Steiger discovered the picture during an appraisal at a customer's house.

The masterpiece was presented from March 10, 2016 to June 5, 2016 as the centerpiece of the exhibition “More beautiful than reality” in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen , and from July 2 to October 3, 2016 in Gotha in the Ducal Museum in Gotha (Schloss Friedenstein Foundation). At the end of 2016, the painting was accepted by Christie's auction house in London for a purchase price of EUR 785,000.

In 2017 a $ 4 million painting by Balthasar van der Ast that was stolen during World War II returned to the Suermondt Ludwig Museum. It is the picture Flowers in a Wanli vase from around 1625 to 1630.

Web links

Commons : Balthasar van der Ast  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Still life by the painter Balthasar van der Ast: Disappeared masterpiece from 1625 found in the Bonn area. In: Generalanzeiger Bonn of January 13, 2016.
  2. ↑ More beautiful than reality - The still lifes of Balthasar van der Ast (1593/94 - 1657) . In: thueringenREPORTER . ( thueringen-reporter.de [accessed on November 20, 2016]).
  3. ^ Auction in London (2016). In: Drehscheibe from December 15, 2016.
  4. ↑ http://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/video/sendung/lokalzeit-aachen/video-finderlohn-fuer-millionen-bild-100.html .
  5. ↑ A tulip is traveling in FAZ on July 12, 2017, page 11.
personal data
SURNAME Ast, Balthasar van der
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch painter of still life
DATE OF BIRTH 1593 or 1594
PLACE OF BIRTH Middelburg , Netherlands
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1657
Place of death Delft