Fish Still Life
Details
The story
In 1903 the Mauritshuis learned that Arnoldus Andries des Tombe, a Hague collector who had died the previous December, had left it 12 paintings in his will. The best known was a girl in a blue and yellow turban that he had bought at a Hague auction in 1881 for two guilders and 30 cents, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. This fish still life by Abraham van Beijeren came to the museum in the same bequest.
The museum gives the canvas no date. Fish were a subject Van Beijeren returned to often, alongside the lavish tables he is better known for.
The Mauritshuis owns the painting and shows it at the Gallery Prince Willem V, its second venue in The Hague, a few minutes' walk away on the Buitenhof.
