Jean Michel Picart

(Antwerp 1600–1682 Paris)
A flower still life,
bears signature lower right: Picart,
oil on canvas, 78 x 58 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for confirming the attribution to Jean Michel Picart for the present painting and for dating it to around 1650. He compares it with a flower still life in the Muzeum Narodowe, Warsaw (RKD database no. 119240) and with a flower still life dated 1648, offered at Sotheby’s, New York, on 24 January 2008, lot 259 (RKD database no. 27625).

Picart achieved great success and his still life paintings, during the latter half of the 1600s, were sought after by many French collectors and Louis XIV, who, in the 1670s, appointed the artist court painter. Numerous works by the Flemish painter were in fact kept in the royal palaces of Versailles and Marly, as reported by inventories of the period.