A Superb Series of Eight Watercolours of Parrot Tulips

This exquisite series of watercolours of tulips from the golden age of tulipomania. These superb studies of Tulip watercolours depict the rarer and, therefore, more valuable varieties of tulip, with their variegated, highly striped petals which were especially sought after.

Watercolours on paper, (28 x 12cm), mounted. (circa 1630).

These drawings are almost identical to a group of 56 sheets in the same technique which were with Robert Noortman in 1987 (S. Segal, Tulips by Anthony Claesz. 56 seventeenth century watercolour drawings by Anthony Claesz. (ca. 1607/08-1649), Maastricht 1987).

Segal attributed the group to Claesz. on the basis of a serious comparison with a drawing on vellum, signed ‘A.C. fc.’, which is part of an album of flower drawings, mostly by Pieter Holsteyn II, from 1640-1641 in the Lindley Library, Royal Horticultural Society, London (inv. 118; ibid., fig. 1).

Anthony Claesz II, Dutch painter. He was active mainly in Amsterdam, but in 1632 he was documented in England. He was the pupil of Balthasar van der Ast but he was also influenced by Hans Bollongier. His main subjects were still-life, flower and fruit pieces.

He was the teacher of Anthony Claesz. III and Gillis Peeters.