Getty Gets a Dazzling de Heem
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| Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Glass Vase with Flowers and Fruit, about 1673-1674. J. Paul Getty Museum |
The Getty Museum has acquired two Dutch still lifes by Pieter Claesz. and Jan Davidsz. de Heem, plus an erotic genre scene by Marguerite Gérard in collaboration with Jean-Honoré Fragonard. The de Heem has just been placed on view. I'll say more about the Claesz. and Gérard/Fragonard in a future post.
Jan Davidsz. de Heem's Glass Vase with Flowers and Fruit was owned by an Italian-German family for over a century. Measuring 34-3/8 by 26-7/16 in., the painting was auctioned by Lempertz (Cologne) on May 17, 2025. The lot essay hailed it as "an exciting and most important addition to the known oeuvre of Jan Davidsz. de Heem… completely unrecorded until recently." It sold for 3.162 million euros, more than doubling the high estimate.
That got less attention than it might have, for it was eclipsed just four days later in New York. On May 25, Sotheby's auctioned the collection of investment banker Thomas Saunders III. Saunders had a similar de Heem, a few inches bigger than the Cologne picture. Given a 27-word title cataloging almost everything in it—Still Life of Roses, Tulips, Lilies, Poppies, Honeysuckle…—it sold for $8.834 million. That set the record for a Dutch still life not by van Gogh.
De Heem's pronk still lifes are big and painterly in the Flemish tradition. His later flower pieces adopt botanical precision and the refinement of late 17th-century Dutch art. The Getty and Saunders pictures are part of a group of four exceptional still lifes with a sunflower at the top of the bouquet, probably executed in Antwerp about 1673-1674. Another "sunflower" de Heem is on long-term loan to the U.K. National Gallery. Each has vivid colors except for the sunflowers, now a muted yellow due to the fading of orpiment yellow pigment.
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| Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Still Life of Roses, Tulips, Lilies, Poppies, Honeysuckle, a Sunflower, an Iris, and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with Two Birds, a Grasshopper, and a Snail, about 1673 or 1674. Ex Saunders collection, auctioned at Sotheby's May 21, 2025 |
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| Reflection of window in Getty picture, Glass Vase with Flowers and Fruit |
Art historian Fred G. Meijer theorizes that the Getty painting was the last of the four sunflower paintings. The treatment of the water-filled vase, with its refracted stems and reflected window, is especially virtuosic. Not only does de Heem paint the window's reflection, but he includes a glass bottle and other objects on the ledge—a still life within a still life—and a cloudscape beyond.
The Getty collection traces Northern still lifes from illuminated manuscript borders and German Renaissance nature studies onward. De Heem is arguably the most influential Dutch/Flemish still life artist, and Glass Vase with Flowers and Fruit becomes a capstone of the collection. Director Timothy Potts called it "the exceptional flower still life the Getty Museum has been seeking for over two decades" and "the most consequential addition to our collection of northern Baroque paintings since we acquired Rembrandt Laughing in 2013."
The new de Heem is on view in West Pavilion gallery W107.
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| Signature on Glass Vase with Flowers and Fruit |
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| Bee, butterfly, overripe plums, and snowball (white flowers) |
Comments
Huge granite "coffins" of ancient origin found underground in Egypt so defy the technical, scientific sophistication of even today, the theory they were created by an advanced non-human race of beings isn't necessarily (or isn't at all) woo-woo.
Speaking of ancient Egypt, so many artifacts from that land are stuffed into galleries of the Metropolitan, they do call to mind (at least for the non-scholar, the non-connoisseur) the idea of a little going a long way. Same idea applies to the Louvre (or other major old-time museums) where millions of canvases that portray largely the nobility or old-world aristocracy are on display.
If LACMA doesn't have enough of that, other museums may have too much. So finding an ideal balance may be just what the doctor ordered.
However, Orlando-type comprehensiveness of certain museums (ie, a tourist-friendly setting that's must-see for millions of people) does make a visit to them almost mandatory. Which the Vanity Fair article about LACMA implied, based on annual attendance, has not been the case with the museum---Micheal Govan referenced that in relation to the popular Grove shopping center north of it. Or the museum not being at a pilgrimage-type level, certainly for tourists, if not plenty of locals too. But Pereira-1986-era LACMA has been sort of neither fish nor fowl, so it will be interesting how the Geffen Galleries affect that.
> Gurr Johns Ltd.
> sold to the J. Paul Getty
> Museum, 2026.
Collectors tend to like giving strength to strength, and a Metropolitan or National Gallery continues to acquire for its galleries. But things like the Met's musical instrument collection (which I assume isn't as actively being added to) or its galleries packed with everything but the kitchen sink after awhile can become too much, too much.
In a way, that's a bit unpleasant, not too different from going into a hardware store and required to sort through 1,000 variations of the same thing.
The opposite extreme is MOCA on Grand Ave. It's so modest in both floor space and the number of objects on display, a visitor walks away with the feeling of, "is that all there is?"
The Getty Center is kind of in the middle (If the Getty Villa were on the hill too, it might be less balanced), the Huntington is more garden than gallery, the Broad does need its extension, and the Hammer and Simon don't generate must-see word-of-mouth.
Not sure how the Lucas Museum or Geffen are going to be treated, but finding the right balance isn't easy---although LA historically has been more "can I have more?" versus "I'm overstuffed, burp."
In a way, that's a bit unpleasant, not too different from going into a hardware store and required to sort through 1,000 variations of the same thing.":
As ever you misunderstand the purpose of encyclopedic collections. And your recent insistence that you never opine on works of art is false on its face.
Encyclopedic collections tell the story of human civilization. With your logic, you would also trash the Library of Congress for having too many books.
Try going to the Met, and stay for an hour. Sit in one gallery. Actively decide how none of the works there are "1,000 variations of the same thing."
Or sit for an hour in front of one picture only. Study it. Read the curators' input about the piece.
No. You won't do that, because you know nothing of art, and you're comfortable staying that way.
I first fell in love with still lifes at Getty, when everything was in Malibu. I simply couldn't believe Jan van Huysum's "Vase of Flowers," of 1722. I bought a huge poster of it and framed it in my office.
I prefer the Getty de Heem to the one that sold for double the price in New York, due mainly to the sublime play in the Getty picture between the glass and the water it contains.
Many Dutch masters vie for the prize of being, as you say, "the most influential Dutch/Flemish still life artist." I leave that difficult judgment to the Dutch art savants.
But I say you dig yourself a very big hole when you combine both Dutch and Flemish still-life traditions. On the winner of the Flemish prize, I nominate Frans Snyders. He mastered not only hybrid pictures with still lifes and live scenes all together.
My favorite Snyders is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where two of his works are shown in such perfection. His first is his collaboration with Peter Paul Rubens, in their "Prometheus Bound," of 1611-1612/1618. [It's horrifying that Philadelphia's web record of this work does not even mention Snyders as the painter of the massive eagle feeding off the hero's liver. I'm mortified for the museum's blunder!]
But in the same gallery, directly opposite the "Prometheus," hangs Snyders's massive and completely solo masterpiece: "Still Life with Terms and a Bust of Ceres," of c. 1630.
https://www.philamuseum.org/objects/104386
The fruits and vegetables of the harvest are fashioned in a central wreath, with terms on either side, and a sculpture bust of Ceres in the center. The fruits, birds and animals featured are spotlit in blazing colors, while the remainder of the picture is all in grisaille.
The museum notes that this picture may have been hung above a giant fireplace in the cold months, and brought down in front of the fireplace as a fireplace screen in summer. That is a splendid thing!
> the purpose of encyclopedic
> collections
Huh? You might just as well say that I believe everything - everything - in a collection either should be on public display or sold or thrown out. Or because not everything owned by a museum can be (or should be) on display, that means nothing should be collected or acquired.
There are also study pieces, works more useful to a scholar than such objects would be to a casual visitor.
The Met also has way more in storage than LACMA does, so one rat pack may be a bit more extreme than the other is.
I think Michael Govan has implied that too much on display becomes (to paraphrase) excessive. But I believe having more of its own collection (encyclopedic or not, high quality or medium quality) in its galleries is better than inserting a lot of on-loan, generic-commercial, municipal-budget-type contemporary art.
I'm trying to figure out the best balancing point. Or where some museums are too excessive while other museums are too modest.
Also, I now realize more than before that the Beaux-Arts Minneapolis Institute of Art isn't the only American museum built during the first half of the 20th century that made LACMA's 1965-1986 buildings so weak, that saying "county" of "county museum" really deserved to come with a "sooie, sooie"-type drawl.