Floris van Dijck, 'A Banquet Still Life', 1622

It was in Haarlem that many of the genres for which Dutch painting is best known were first developed. Floris van Dijck was among the city’s most important pioneers in the field of still-life painting. Celebrated for their precise realism, his paintings invariably depict banquet tables laden with bread, cheese, fruits, and luxurious glassware. On the one hand these reveal pride in how the fledgling Dutch Republic prospered, but on the other they serve as a reminder that material goods are ultimately less important than spiritual concerns, a message that would remain central to much of seventeenth-century Dutch still-life painting.

Van Dijck’s marriage in 1627 to the wealthy Cornelia Jansdr Vlasmans enhanced his already considerable social standing. It provided further stability and may well explain why works by the artist are exceedingly rare, as there was little financial incentive for him to be productive. Only just over a dozen of his paintings have survived. Even so, his banquet still lifes defined the genre and his works were the fountain from which a great tradition of opulent still-life painting sprang: the works of artists such as Pieter Claesz in Haarlem, Willem Kalf in Rotterdam and Jan Davidsz de Heem in Utrecht and Antwerp – to name but a few – are unthinkable without the pioneering example set by Van Dijck.

The breakfast still life shows a richly laid table with fruit, olives, sweets and butter shavings in various blue and white Wan Li Chinese export porcelain bowls, a stack of cheese and apples on pewter plates, a knife, a leather gourd, a stoneware Schnabelkanne, a silver-gilt nautilus cup, a roemer, stemmed glass flutes, a pewter plate with spices and a slice of melon, and various scattered fruits, breads and nuts, all arranged upon a white lace and damask cloth laid over a red damask cloth covering a table. It is largest work by Van Dijck to have survived and, within his small oeuvre, ranks as among his most impressive. Moreover, it is a superb example of the beginnings of the great Dutch tradition of painting so-called banquet still lifes. Such early examples are characterised by a predilection for delicacies laid out on a table, piled high and seen as if from a bird’s-eye view, allowing all the goods on display to be clearly visible, in much the same way as early flower still lifes of the same period tend to show every flower individually.