A magnificent 1850 still life by German-born American painter Severin Roesen, Still Life with Fruit and Flowers in a Landscape, is expected bring more than $600,000 as the central highlight in Heritage Auctions’ Signature® Fine American, European Art & Western Art Auction on Tuesday, May 17 at the company’s Design District Annex, 1518 Slocum Street.
“This rare example of Roesen’s early work was produced only two years after the artist’s arrival in the United States from his native Germany where he had trained as a porcelain painter,” said Dr. Marianne Berardi, Senior Fine Arts Expert at Heritage. “The sophisticated composition has its roots in the lavish still lifes of the eighteenth-century Dutch and Flemish masters of the genre, such as Jan van Huysum, Jan Frans van Dael and the Spaendoncks. The beautiful design, combined with Roesen’s dazzling technical skills and attention to naturalistic detail, makes this work an exceptional example of the opulence characterizing mid-nineteenth-century still-life painting, and is widely considered one of Roesen’s finest known works.”
Still Life with Fruit and Flowers in a Landscape has descended in a single family since its original purchase directly from the artist. It has been displayed, without interruption, in the family’s 1880 New Jersey estate along the Neversink River.
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