Still Life of Exotic Flowers on a Marble Ledge

Possibly the artist’s husband, Juriaen Pool II (1665-1745), Amsterdam, by 1745;

Possibly purchased from Pool by his son, Frederik Ruysch Pool (1696-1765), by 1745 [1];

With John Smith (1781-1855), London, stock no. 661, 1830-1831 [2];

Purchased from Smith by Richard Simmons, Esq. (ca. 1782-1847), London, 1831-at least 1835 [3];

Malcolm Orme (d. 1887), London, by 1887;

Purchased at his posthumous sale, The Choice Collection of Pictures formed by Malcolm Orme, Esq., Christie, Manson and Woods, London, May 7, 1887, lot 6, by Major L. [4];

Possibly with Richard Green, London, mid 1950s [5];

Possibly with St. James's Gallery, London, by 1964 [6];

Major Herbert Frederick Brudenell Foster (1908-1997), London, by 1997;

Purchased at his posthumous sale, Old Master Pictures, Christie, Manson and Woods, London, April 18, 1997, lot 99, by James and Virginia Moffett, Kansas City, MO, 1997-2017;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2017.

NOTES:

[1] Frederik Ruysch Pool purchased six of his mother’s paintings between 1734 and 1744, one of which was “a piece with rare flowers” painted in 1735. Upon his father’s death on October 6, 1745, the estate cancelled Frederik’s remaining debt owed to his father for the purchase of his mother’s paintings. Records of the transaction form part of Juriaen Pool’s estate, which the Amsterdam municipal archives has preserved. They have also been published in Abraham Bredius, Künster-Inventare: Urkunded zur Geschichte des Holländischern Kunst des 16ten, 17ten und 18ten Jahrhunderts, vol. 4 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff), 1205. Ruysch scholar Marianne Berardi believes that the bouquet of 1735 is the one at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Art. See Marianne Berardi, Science into Art: Rachel Ruysch’s Early Development as a Still-Life Painter (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1998), 138n268.

[2] Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, photocopy of John Smith stock book A, original in Victoria and Albert Museum, London, p. 35.

[3] According to A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters, vol. 6 (London: Smith and Son, 1835), no. 13, p. 499. John Smith imported the painting in 1830.

[4] According to Christie’s Archives in London, the stencil mark 574x on the reverse of the painting confirms that the Nelson-Atkins painting was sold by order of the Executors of the late Mrs. Malcolm Orme, at Christie’s London on Saturday, May 7, 1887 (lot no. 6) to “Major L.” Their daybook indicates that Major Cosmo Little of South Cavalry Barracks, Aldershot, was the executor of the estate. Major Cosmo Little was the son-in-law of Malcolm Orme and may have bought-in the painting.

[5] According to Marianne Berardi, in the Nelson-Atkins curatorial files, the work was with Richard Green in the 1950s. It may have then passed on to St. James’s Gallery, which Richard Green ran with his brother John between 1959 and 1964.

[6] Ibid.