Simon Pietersz. Verelst (The Hague 1664-?1721 London)

This unrecorded pair of still lifes by Verelst is characteristic of the small-scale bouquets in which the artist specialized toward the end of his career. Moving to London in 1668, he must have established himself rather rapidly upon his arrival, with Samuel Pepys recounting in his celebrated diary an evening visit to the painter's studio on 11 April 1669: ‘Everelst…did shew us a little flower-pot of his drawing, the finest thing that ever, I think, I saw in my life; the drops of dew hanging on the leaves, so as I was forced again and again to put my finger to it, to feel whether my eyes were deceived or no…a better picture I never saw in my whole life; and it is worth going twenty miles to see it’ (The Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, 1870, London, p. 653).
We are grateful to Dr. Fred G. Meijer for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs and dating the works to the artist’s maturity, after 1700, probably from circa 1709.