An immigrant in Amsterdam
The favourable economic and cultural climate of the Northern Netherlands in the seventeenth century acted as a powerful magnet to people from all walks of life: merchants, artists, scholars, but also mercenaries and sailors from foreign lands. There was a lively traffic with all parts of the known world: via the Sound with the Baltic countries, Russia and Scandinavia; via the North Sea with England and Flanders right down to the Mediterranean; and finally across the great oceans with the East and West Indies. Amsterdam was the metropolis of Europe, where foreign products could be bought in abundance and the streets presented an exotic scene. Around the mid-seventeenth century Dutch ships transported more tonnage than all the other countries put together. The Dutch East India Company was the world's first multinational and it brought huge prosperity. Holland was the major trading nation and Amsterdam emerged as a financial centre - the only place in the world - where people could exchange virtually all foreign notes.
Artists as travellers
But it was not only merchants and goods that were travelling from place to place. Artists also journeyed abroad to widen their outlook. Jacob van Ruisdael sketched the countryside around Bentheim, Allard van Everdingen travelled to Sweden, and countless artists undertook the journey over the Alps to Italy and returned laden with sketches and paintings. And those painters who stayed closer to home also turned this to their advantage. Artists adopted each other's ideas or drew inspiration from each other's work. At the time this was regarded as a compliment rather than plagiarism; not so much a matter of slavish imitation but rather the application of new ideas. Artists inspired each other and this allowed them to develop their own personal style with their own particular brushwork and use of colour. In the first half of the seventeenth century Amsterdam was indisputably the economic and cultural capital of Northern Europe.
Johannes Bouman in Holland
Johannes Bouman was one of the many foreign artists who was drawn by the cultural climate of the Northern Netherlands. Born in Strasbourg, he travelled north at an early age. Little is known of his life, but we do know that he was christened Jean-Jacques Bauman in Strasbourg on 17 December 1601 and that in 1622 he was registered in Amsterdam as a painter, having adopted the more Dutch-sounding name Johannes Bouman. In 1626 in Amsterdam he married a certain Anna Brongers from Wezel. But although that is all we know about him, his surviving paintings do shed light on some aspects of his life. For instance, he must have continued to travel after his marriage, and he probably died in or after 1653, the year of his last dated painting.
A wealth of impressions
Johannes Bouman specialised in painting fruit still lifes. When he arrived in the Netherlands he brought with him a wealth of impressions of French and German art; not surprising for someone who came from Alsace and had also travelled. We can gather from his work that during his travels he had visited parts of Germany and Flanders and probably also Utrecht and Dordrecht. He was clearly influenced by German, Flemish and Dutch still-life painters, and on looking at Bouman's work names such as Flegel, Assteyn and Bosschaert spring to mind.
Mouse from Germany
Bouman's still lifes inevitably betray the influence of his German origins. In Frankfurt Georg Flegel (1566-1638) and his pupil Sebastian Stosskopf (1597-1657), who like Bouman was also born in Strasbourg, developed their own still-life school. Their favourite themes were tables decked with food and other objects, flowers in glass vases and fruit in wicker baskets or porcelain dishes. Moreover they enlivened their compositions with birds, insects and small creatures. The mouse in Bouman's painting might have walked straight out of Flegel's studio.
Artichokes from Dordrecht
In the Netherlands Bouman will undoubtedly have seen work by members of the Bosschaert group. These were either pupils or members of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder's family, who had settled in various places in the Netherlands. In Utrecht Balthasar van der Ast (1593/4-1657) ranked as the foremost representative of this group. He depicted baskets of fruit combined with individual objects arranged on a tabletop that merged seamlessly into the background of the picture. He also painted fruits displayed in a dish or platter alongside large compositional elements such as pumpkins and artichokes. However the place that must have had the greatest impact on Bouman was Dordrecht, where painters such as Bartholomeus Abrahamsz. Assteyn (Dordrecht 1607-after 1667), Johannes Bosschaert (Middelburg 1610/1611-Dordrecht 1628) and Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp (Dordrecht 1594-1652) were active. The first two artists painted baskets of flowers or fruit combined with individual fruits, flowers and insects. It was particularly Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp who incorporated large artichokes and other vegetables in his kitchen pieces in a way that was unique in seventeenth-century painting.
Basket from Flanders
Wicker baskets filled with flowers or fruit are a staple element in the French still-life repertoire. These subjects frequently recur in the oeuvre of Bouman's French contemporaries, such as Louise Moillon and Jacques Linard for example, revealing the influence of Flanders where the independent genre of still-life painting originated at the end of the sixteenth century.
Dish from China
The Chinese porcelain dish that features regularly in Bouman's pictures allows us to assume that it belonged to the painter. This in turn tells us something about the degree of prosperity that Bouman attained in Holland. Although Chinese egg-shell china was brought back in the Dutch East India Company's ships in large quantities, it was nonetheless extremely expensive and few could afford such an exotic article. The pewter platter in Bouman's picture is also a luxury item. It bears the so-called rose-mark, a hallmark for top-quality pewter that was generally used in the seventeenth century by Dutch pewterers.
Personal style
Bouman assimilated all the various influences into a personal style. He frequently combined his fruit baskets with individual fruits, insects and animals, and several pictures even portray a monkey. He painted the Still Life with Vegetables, Fruit and a Mouse shown here in 1637. This monumental composition, in which he unites small and large objects, foreshadows the later Baroque fruit still lifes. The incorporation of large compositional elements such as the artichokes and gourd, at the left on the stone tabletop, is unique in still-life painting of that time. Other known works by Bouman - the Still Life with Pears and a Mouse of 1635 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg), the Still Life with a Basket of Pears and Bunches of Grapes of 1633 (Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck) and the Porcelain Dish of Fruit (Museum Flehite, Amersfoort) - are conceived on a much more modest scale.
This still life is a splendid example of the quality Johannes Bouman achieved in his painting by absorbing and reflecting his contemporaries. This imposing picture, which forms the highpoint of his oeuvre, has only recently been discovered and is published here for the first time.