Janssens Elinga, Pieter (1623, Bruges-1682, Amsterdam)

A bread roll, peaches, an orange, a lemon segment, a porcelain dish with nuts, a knife and a roemer on a ledge. Oil on panel. Signed 'P. Janssens' in lower left corner. 44.5 x 35.5 cm, framed.

Born in Bruges, the artist is believed to have received his first lessons from his father Gijsbrecht Elinga, who died in 1637. He apppears in the records of Rotterdam in 1653 and later in those of Amsterdam in 1657 and 1662, the latter as both an painter and a violinist. Janssens Elinga was active as a painter of interior genre scenes with perspective effects and still lifes. The former clearly influenced by the art of Pieter de Hooch, to whom works in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries were often misattributed. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Janssens Elinga or any other artist was de Hooch's pupil. (Sutton, P. Love Letters: Dutch Genre Paintings in the Age of Vermeer, 2003). Few still lifes by the artist are known and none are dated. Vroom lists five signed examples of which the painting in the Bredius Museum, The Hague, is the only one on panel and with dimensions corresponding to the present work (N.R.A. Vroom, A Modest Message, Schiedam, 1980, II, pp. 82-83). Provenance: Exhibited at Paris, La Nature Morte et son Inspiration, 1960, no. 28. Sold at Christie's Old Masters Pictures, April 2005.