Vanitas Still Life

Vanitas Still Life by François van Daellen dates to 1650 and is executed in oil on paper laid down on panel. The documented ownership chain begins with a private collection in the United States. The work appeared at Bonhams in New York on 6 November 2013, offered as lot 15 under the attribution "Attributed to Frans van Dalen."

It subsequently passed through the New York dealer Jack Kilgore & Co., Inc., before being purchased on 20 May 2014 by the National Gallery of Art, where it remains in the collection.

The transition from a tentative attribution at auction to a firm attribution to François van Daellen reflects the evolving scholarly identification of the artist. The painting's movement through a single New York dealer and a major auction house within roughly six months suggests an active secondary market for seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes during that period.

The painting Vanitas Still Life by François van Daellen is presently in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It entered the museum on 20 May 2014 after being sold at Bonhams in New York on 6 November 2013 (lot 15) and subsequently handled by Jack Kilgore & Co., Inc. The work is recorded in the National Gallery of Art's acquisition records, though no specific inventory or accession number is cited in the available documentation. No exhibition history for this piece has been documented in the sources consulted.

François van Daellen's Vanitas Still Life, created around 1650, is an oil painting executed on paper that has been affixed to a panel. This work exemplifies the genre of still life, which often carried symbolic weight in the 17th century. It invites viewers to reflect on themes of mortality and the transient nature of earthly existence, a common motif in Dutch Golden Age art.