KAREL van VOGELAER
(Maastricht, 1653 - Rome, 1695)
Fowler Vases
Pair of oil on canvas, 98x37 cm
The painter, originally from Maastricht, had, as attested by the biographer Lione Pascoli, considerable success as a specialist in vases with flowers, in the Roman context, in the second half of the 17th century; however, it is proving very difficult to reconstruct a precise identification, today, of the rich output of works, cited by Pascoli as executed by Karel van Vogelaer for prestigious clients in Rome.
In the two canvases in question, above all, the curious format strongly verticalized, almost as if they were panels, in which the Nordic master develops in a rather virtuosic way a complicated interplay of balances in height, without renouncing the formal richness and the extreme variety that are a specific trait of Voegelaer, alongside the refined compositional elegance and the study of chromatic references in the floral elements, even in contrast with the greyish-blue background.
Note also the emergence of the two evanescent blue bell flowers, placed in an unlikeable way in the foreground, as an element that seems to emerge from the surface of the canvas.
Karel van Vogelaer
