THREE DUTCH TREATS

Three fine 17th-Century Dutch paintings have been added to the County Museum of Art’s collection, thanks to the Ahmanson Foundation.

The foundation recently bought “Still Life With Oysters and Grapes” (1653) by Jan Davidsz. de Heem, “Banquet Still Life” (1667) by Abraham van Beyeren and “Forest Clearing With Cattle” (circa 1665-70) by Philips Koninck at undisclosed prices and presented them to the museum, where they now hang in the 17th-Century Dutch galleries in the Ahmanson Building.

The significance of the gift is larger than the number of paintings might imply, according to Scott Schaefer, curator of European paintings and sculpture, for they represent three distinct attitudes:the vulgar, the precise and the poetic.

“The two still lifes are polar opposites,” he says. The large (55 1/2x48-inch) Van Beyeren is “a grand banquet scene and a very painterly work” exemplifying a Flemish aesthetic. The smaller (14x20 7/8-inch) De Heem, with “a porcelain-like surface that shows as little as possible of the artist’s hand,” is “restrained and exacting” and more typically Dutch.

Some historians read symbolism into every object painted in such sumptuous still lifes, but Schaefer is “wary” of investing them with too much meaning. He says these pictures issue a warning about “a vulgar display of wealth” in their depictions of expensive, imported fruits but they also betray a fondness for looking at masses of objects and representing them in sparkling detail. A time-piece and juicy, spoiling fruit in the Van Beyeren suggest impermanence and decadence, but the glass and silver objects depicted belonged to the artist and were not an indictment of a particular individual’s worldly accumulations.

Koninck’s peaceful landscape--a placid view of cows and figures in a lush forest--is a “poetic painting” in Schaefer’s view. “What’s really special about it is the quality of light,” he says. One of only about 65 landscapes painted by Koninck, “Forest Clearing” complements a larger, more typical, panorama in the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection.

The De Heem still life, which “is in the most perfect state of preservation imaginable,” according to Schaefer, was bought from a private American collection at auction in New York. The Ven Beyeren and the Koninck both came from English country houses whose private collections are being slowly dispersed to meet estate expenses.