Beyeren
Abraham Hendricksz van Beyeren
1620/1621-1690
Abraham Hendricksz. van Beyeren was born in 1620 or 1621 in The Hague and died in Overschie (near Rotterdam) in 1690. He was married in Leyden in 1639. The next year he returned to The Hague where he joined the painters' guild and in 1656 was one of the founding members of the Confreria Pictura. In 1657 he joined the guild in Delft. Van Beyeren moved back to The Hague in 1663, to Amsterdam in the early 1670s, and by 1674 was established in Alkmaar. The final move to Overschie took place in 1678. Van Beyeren, today ranked among the greatest of Dutch still life painters, seems to have received little recognition during his lifetime, a fact which may well explain his continued uprootings. His paintings brought low prices and he exerted little influence on his contemporaries. Houbraken makes no mention of him in De groote Schouburgh. Van Beyeren painted numerous types of still life: fish pieces; breakfast and banquet pieces; game pieces and vases of flowers. Pieter de Putter, a painter of fish still lifes, who was related to the artist through van Beyeren's second marriage in 1647, is thought to have been his teacher in the marine genre. Landscape backgrounds in some of the early compositions point to the work of Jan van Goyen. The series of banquet pieces, 'Bancketkens', to which the Kress painting belongs, were apparently inspired by those of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, who sought a similar effect of abundance in the depiction of fruit and lobsters with opulent vessels and curtains. Van Beyeren's brilliant color in such depictions is in marked contrast to that of his more subtle, sombre fish pieces. In this departure from the monochromatic, the artist is typical of Dutch painters at mid-century but his loose brushwork and the restless movement of his surfaces stand apart from the usual Dutch contemplation and concern for detail.
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