A wicker basket with apples, pears, cherries, plums, peas and currents, with a sliced lemon and a monkey overturning an earthenware bowl of wild strawberries, on a ledge

Not much is known about the Strasbourg born Johannes Bouman. He is registered in 1622 in Amsterdam as a painter and according to archival documents lived at the Binnen Amstel in 1626. In the same year, on 15 August and at the age of 24, he is recorded to have married Anna Bongers from Wesel. Bouman is recorded as a painter in Utrecht on 14 March 1639 and on 28 May 1647 and probably remained in Utrecht until his death in 1658. His small oeuvre exists of beautifully arranged and carefully executed fruit still lifes like the present lot, at times accompanied by a small monkey.