PHILIPS ANGEL I OF MIDDELBURG (Middelburg 1616 – in or after 1683)
Philips Angel I of Middelburg (Middelburg 1616 – in or after 1683)
Still-Life with Dead Birds on a Stone Plinth
Oil on panel, 72 x 106 cm (28.4 x 41.7 inch)
Contained in a darkwood and partially gilt ‘baklijst’ frame of Dutch 17th-century model
Signed and dated ‘P. Angel 1668’ (on the stone plinth)
Provenance
~ Mr Dr J. Bierens de Haan, Museumplein, Amsterdam, c. 1920
~ By descent to Jonkvrouwe Wilhelmina Cornelia Bierens de Haan, née Van Riemsdijk, Aerdenhout
~ Restored by A. Traas, 1953
~ Anonymous sale Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, 22 November 1955, lot 2, repr.
~ Anonymous sale Christie’s, London, 14 December 2001, lot 78, repr.
~ Private collection, The Netherlands
Exhibited
Stillevens door Zeeuwse Meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, Zierikzee (Stadsmuseum), 18 January – 19 November 2023, cat. no. 120
Literature
F. Meijer, Stillevens door Zeeuwse Meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Zierikzee (Stadsmuseum), 18 January – 19 November 2023, cat. no. 120, p. 79, repr.
***
Philips Angel was born in Middelburg into a family of Protestant émigrés from Antwerp, the son of Willem Angel and Elisabeth van Heuckelroy.1 His extant paintings display the influence of Alexander Adriaenssens and François Ryckhals, whose stable interiors are comparable and who may have been his teacher. Angel worked in his home town for all his life, except for a sojourn in Haarlem from 1639 to 1645, where he became a member of the Guild of St Luke, and where he married in August 1642.
Angel has long been confused with the painter Philips Angel of Leiden (1618–1664), also the author of a treatise Lof der Schilder-const, published in 1642, and apparently the cousin of Middelburg’s Philips. His identity was re-established by the art historian L.J. Bol in 1949.2
The present work is a particularly ambituous still-life by the artist, including a cockerel, chicken, pigeon, wild duck, Eurasian jay and a bittern.3 It belongs to a small group of comparable still-lifes by Angel, including the signed work in the Town Hall in Middelburg, which is dated 1649,4 a and a very small oval panel, signed and dated 1650, in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (fig.).5
1. For the artist, see Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon (…), Munich/Berlin 1992 -, vol. 3 (1992), pp. 731-32.
2. J.J. Bol, ‘Philips Angel van Middelburg en Philips Angel van Leiden’, Oud Holland, LXIV, 1949, pp. 16-17.
3. Identified by Professor J.M. Tinbergen of the University of Groningen.
4. Oil on panel, 46 x 57 cm; N. Bakkeret, Masters of Middelburg, Amsterdam 1984, p. 202, no. 43, repr.
5. Oil on panel, 9.8 x 13.1 cm, inv. no. 918A; Meijer, op. cit., p. 79, repr.
