Still Life with Earthenware Jug and Clay Pipes

Pieter van Anraedt made his living painting portraits. This is the only still life by him that we know, and he signed and dated it in 1658, when he was in his early twenties and just starting out. On the table stand an earthenware jug, a small coal pan for lighting pipes, a glass of dark beer and a dish of tobacco with clay pipes, the everyday kit of a Dutch smoker. The light falls softly from the left, and each object catches it in its own way.

The picture spent the Second World War in America. Its English owner, Christopher Norris, lent it to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard from July 1940 to December 1945. The Mauritshuis bought it in 1972 with help from the Friends of the Mauritshuis, the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund and the Rembrandt Association.