Peter Ykens and Jan Pauwel Gillemans the Younger

Anonymous sale (‘The Property of a Gentleman’), London, Phillips, 2 December 1997, lot 132 (as Jan Pieter Ykens and Jan Pauwel Gillemans the Younger);

Anonymous sale (‘The Property of an Austrian Collector’), London, Christie’s, 8 July 2009, lot 173 (as Peter Ykens and Jan Pauwel Gillemans the Younger);

With Jan Muller Antiquair, Brussels;

From whom acquired by the Baron and Baronne de Giey;

Thence by descent.

This vibrant pair of paintings is a collaboration between Peter Ykens, who executed the figures, and Jan Pauwel Gillemans the Younger, who painted the fruit and animals. A third artist, such as Peter Rysbrack (1655–1729), may have been responsible for the architectural setting.

The design for at least the second composition, featuring a parrot and guinea pigs, may have been inherited by Gillemans the Younger from his father Jan Pauwel Gillemans the Elder (1618–1675). A version attributed to Gillemans the Elder, different from the present example in only a few minor details such as the inclusion of a cut watermelon on the left of the swag of fruit, sold at Dorotheum in 2002.¹

¹ Vienna, Dorotheum, 2 October 2002, lot 369.