Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings Signed (upper right): J.De heem
Gallery Label De Heem's earliest paintings are precocious fruit pieces produced in his native Utrecht under the influence of Balthasar van der Ast. He moved to Leiden about 1626 and to Antwerp ten years later. This panel of about 1640 is a simple paean to bacchic pleasure, and to textures and light.
Provenance [Léon Gauchez, Paris, with Alexis Febvre, Paris, until 1870; sold to Blodgett]; William T. Blodgett, Paris and New York (1870–71; sold half share to Johnston); William T. Blodgett, New York, and John Taylor Johnston, New York (1871; sold to MMA
Exhibition History Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. "30 Masterpieces: An Exhibition of Paintings from the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art," October 4–November 23, 1947, unnumbered cat.
Iowa City. State University of Iowa, School of Fine Arts. "30 Masterpieces: An Exhibition of Paintings from the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art," January 9–March 31, 1948, unnumbered cat.
Bloomington. Indiana University. "30 Masterpieces: An Exhibition of Paintings from the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art," April 18–May 16, 1948, no catalogue.
Grand Rapids, Mich. Grand Rapids Art Museum. "A Moral Compass: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Painting in the Netherlands," April 16–August 15, 1999, no. 11.
Albany Institute of History & Art. "Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life," September 2002, no. 24.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 18, 2007–January 6, 2008, no catalogue.
References Louis Decamps. "Un musée transatlantique (2e article)." Gazette des beaux-arts , 2nd ser., 5 (May 1872), p. 437.Les peintres flamands de nature morte au XVIIe siècle . Brussels, 1956, pp. 105, 173.Les peintres flamands de nature morte au XVIIe siècle . Sterrebeek, 1983, pp. 127, 361, no. 98.Letter to Walter Liedtke . February 13, 1995, retracts his earlier attribution of it to Thomas de Paep, but feels that it looks "too weak" to be an autograph work by de Heem; notes that in any case the style points to de Heem's Antwerp studio and a date of about the mid-1640s.in A Moral Compass: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Painting in the Netherlands . Exh. cat., Grand Rapids Art Museum. Grand Rapids, Mich., 1999, pp. 64–65, 103, no. 11, ill. (color), suggests that the wine refers to lust and that the painting "invites observers to choose between temporal pleasures and eternal gratification".Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life . Exh. cat., Albany Institute of History & Art. Albany, 2002, p. 76–77, no. 24, ill. (color), acknowledge the possible moralistic interpretations of this painting, but note that the absence of the usual allusions to transience may mean that it is simply a celebration of "gustatory delights that stimulate the eye and the palate"; suggest a date of 1640 based on the influence of Pieter Claesz.; give a brief history of oysters in the New World and provide a recipe for stewed oysters.in Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life . Exh. cat.Albany, 2002, p. 7.Metropolitan Museum Journal 39 (2004), pp. 197, 214, 245, appendix 1A no. 125, ill.Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art . New York, 2007, vol. 1, pp. xi, 316–17, no. 74, colorpl. 74, as painted "probably during the late 1630s or about 1640".
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