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PEETER SION (ANVERS VERS 1620-1695)
Vanité au sablier et au crâne
signé 'Peeter Sion fecit' (en bas, à droite, en bas de la page)
huile sur toile
56,6 x 44,5 cm. (221⁄4 x 171⁄2 in.)
Provenance
M. Wolff, Amsterdam, avant 1938 (comme 'Claire Peeters').
Sam Bernhard Levie, Amsterdam (selon W. Mautner, op. cit. infra).
Legat & Mainz, La Haye, en 1941 (comme 'Peeter Sion') (selon W. Mautner, op. cit. infra).
H. Tenkink, Amsterdam, en 1950.
Dr. P. Hofman, Amsterdam, avant 1966 ; puis par descendance à l'actuel propriétaire.Literature
W. Mautner, 'Onbekende Meesters - Onbekende Werken', Oud-Holland, 1941, 58, 1, p. 43, reproduit en noir et blanc fig. 5.
W. L. Hairs, Les peintres flamands de fleurs au XVIIe siècle, Paris, 1965, pp. 280-281 et pp. 411-412 (édition complétée, Waterloo, 1998, p. 388).
E. Greindl, Les peintres flamands de nature morte au XVIIe siècle, Bruxelles, 1983, p. 146.Post Lot Text
PEETER SION, VANITAS WITH A HOURGLASS AND A SKULL, OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED
The registers of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke are the main sources of information we have on Peeter Sion (around 1620-1695): trained by the Antwerp painter Frans van Lanckvelt (1607-1639), he then joined the workshop of Willem Forchondt the Elder (1608-1678), who had important commercial relations with Vienna, Lisbon and Cadiz. There, Sion mainly produced works with religious and mythological subjects on copper, a medium that was more resistant to travel. The present composition is therefore a rare example of a vanitas painting in the painter's oeuvre.
Note on the provenance
This vanitas painting comes from the collection of Sam Bernhard Levie (1887-1943), a Jewish textile dealer based in Amsterdam. It was among a group of pictures by Dutch and Italian masters – which included names such as Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde (1638-1698), Adam Willaerts (1577-1664), Abraham van Beijeren (ca. 1620-1690), Balthasar van der Ast (1593-1657), Frans de Momper (1603-1660), Leonard Bramer (1596-1674), Orazio Borgianni (1574-1616) and Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585) – that Levie started selling shortly after the outbreak of the war, when anti-Semitic measurements began to oppress the Dutch Jewish community.
Having probably lost his job as a result of the persecution, Levie had to sell off his possessions to pay for his livehood. Deported with his wife Sara de Zwarte (1899-1943) to the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, the couple was murdered there on 28 May 1943. They did not have children.
In accordance with Levie's will, drawn up in 1940, the couple's estate was to go to Dr. Albert Heppner (1900-1945), a collector and art historian who went into hiding in 1942 and died in 1945 without having asserted his rights to Levie's estate. It was not until 1950 that his widow, Irene Marianne Krämer (1904-1951), became aware of the document when she visited her notary, who, coincidentally, was the same one who registered Levie's will. It is conceivable that she was aware of the forced sales of the couple, but she did not live long enough to claim her rights to the paintings sold. The rights to Sam Bernhard Levie's property thus passed to the Heppners' son, Max Amichai Heppner, an author now based in the United States whose books include I Live in a Chickenhouse, a remarkable memoir about his years spent in hiding with his parents on a farm in occupied Holland. Heppner used as illustrations for his childhood memoir the very drawings that he had made while living in the chicken house on the farm.
Only three of Levie's paintings sold under duress have been recovered to date, the present vanitas being the latest. The first two paintings were repatriated to the Netherlands shortly after the war but were only returned to the rightful heir in March 2014 (see: https://www.restitutiecommissie.nl/en/recommendation/s-b-levie/). The recent agreement to sell this painting by Peeter Sion made possible with the help of Christie's, the owner of the painting and Mondex Corporation on behalf of Mr. Max Amichai Heppner, is a way to do justice to Sam Bernhard Levie.Special notice
Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.