Jan van Huysum

François Alziari, baron de Malaussena (1837-1905), Nice (L.1887, with his numberings: 154 and 155),

his sale, Paris, Delbergue-Cormont, 18-20 April 1866, lots 318 and 319 (both described as 'groupe de fruits')

These two energetically drawn sheets, depicting classic Van Huysum fruit-piece compositions, are drawn in his characteristic, free style. A talented and original draftsman, Van Huysum frequently made full compositional drawings of this type; many of these drawings are, as here, executed in pen and ink and wash, sometimes with the addition of delicate watercolor¹, while others are more schematic, and drawn in a distinctive oiled chalk. 

Van Huysum would never have intended such drawings to have been sold from his studio. Instead they would have been used to provide prospective clients with a loose leaf model book, from which they could choose a composition that the artist would subsequently paint in oil. Whilst no surviving paintings of these precise compositions appears to survive, they are extremely similar to a number of the artist's painted works, and the drawings can be compared with examples in Rotterdam, Vienna and Weimar.²

^1.For example the otherwise comparable drawing in Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. 22673; see S. Segal, The Temptations of Flora. Jan van Huysum 1682-1749, exh. cat., Delft, Museum Het Prinsenhof, and Houston, The Museum of Fine Arts, 2006-7, pp. 263, no. F36 reproduced

^2.C. White, The Flower Drawings of Jan van Huysum, Leigh-on-Sea 1964, nos. 118, 131, 135, reproduced