ROEPEL, Coenraet

(b. 1678 Den Haag, d. 1748 Den Haag)

Dutch painter. He was trained in The Hague in the studio of the portrait painter Constantijn Netscher before teaching himself the art of still-life painting. From 1716 he worked as a court painter to the Prince Palatinate Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz in Dûsseldorf and in 1724 was enrolled in the painter’s guild of The Hague, where he remained an active member until his death in 1748, collaborating with Matthias Terwesten on a programme of mural decorations which still partially survive today.

As a flower painter his work comes close to that of Rachel Ruysch, who was one of the best known and most successful female artists of the seventeenth century. Like her, Roepel painted his flower pieces with astonishing attention to detail and the most refined execution and his compositions continued the seventeenth-century traditions of decorative flower painting into the first quarter of the eighteenth century.

Roepel’s work is widely represented in museums in Leipzig, Amsterdam, Kassel, Dresden, Prague and London.

Still-Life

The picture shows a still-life of fruit on a ledge and in a blue and white porcelain bowl.

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Still-Life

Coenraet Roepel, an artist born and active in The Hague, achieved prominence within a sub-genre of still-life painting, depicting fruit and flowers assembled within a stone niche.

The present picture shows a still-life of grapes, melons, peaches, plums and other fruit with morning glory and shafts of wheat in a stone niche, with a bunch of grapes and medlars hanging above. Most of the fruit are in overly ripe state. The over ripeness of the fruit, their blemishes and signs of decay are indicators that Roepel’s still life is not simply a celebration of nature’s abundance but a reminder of the transience of life.

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Still-Life of Flowers

In this still-life, on a stone plinth enclosed within a niche stands a gilt classical vase in the antique style filled with an arrangement of flowers. These include different types of roses and tulips, carnations, convulvus, small narcissi, snapdragons, and an iris.

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