Hendrik Reekers (1815–1854) Dutch
A plentiful still life with varied game and hunting accoutrements, flowers and fruit on a silver platter before a Classical urn and arranged on a stone ledge

Signed, oil on panel, 92cm by 80cm

Provenance: The Ledger Galleries Ltd, London, September 1963

Hendrik Reekers worked as an artist in nineteenth century Haarlem. He learned under two great painters, his own father Johannes Reekers the Elder (1790-1858) and Gregorius Jacobus Johannes van Os (1782-1861), a still life and landscape painter. Reekers followed in his teacher’s example, with his oeuvre consisting of still life oil paintings and studies on paper that closely emulate the highly detailed, luscious images created by van Os and the accurately represented fruit and comprehensive studies by Reekers the Elder. He also became a teacher himself in 1837 and went on to travel frequently to Paris and Brussels before he died at 38.

The painting is a showcase of the artists’ technical ability and continues the Dutch tradition of still life painting. Reekers has accurately depicted poultry game typically hunted in the Autumn season, pigeon, partridge and pheasant. Along with the game is an artful arrangement of flowers in vase, including Auriculas, Rhododendrons, Carnations, Heather, and Roses. To add to the richness of the almost life size composition, Reekers included fruits not native to the Netherlands. These luxury fruits of pineapple, lemons, pomegranate, and peaches would have been imported or specially cultivated, alluding to the global trade the Netherlands participated and the wealth it produced for the participants.

This painting, like many of Reekers’ artworks and the still life genre in general, strikes a tension between highly realistic representation and artificial composition. Though the game is traditionally of the Autumn season, most flowers have their season in spring to late summer. So, although the arrangement of items may seem careless and haphazard, it was meticulously planned out, perhaps using stock drawings of some of the items either not in season or difficult to obtain.