Ottmar Elliger

Ottmar Elliger - a Flemish Baroque flower painter

The artist Ottmar Elliger was born in Gothenburg and his earliest dated work is from 1653. Elliger trained with Daniel Seghers in Antwerp, and thereafter went to Amsterdam, where he married in 1660 the daughter of Jacob van Walscapelle. In 1666, the year after this picture was painted, he is recorded in Hamburg, where he seems to have stayed until appointed court painter to the Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg in Berlin in 1670. He would remain in that city until his death in 1679 at the age of forty-five.
Despite having studied with Daniel Seghers, Elliger's most direct influence came from Willem Kalf.
Many of the central elements in this composition are derived from paintings by Kalf, for instance the Wan-Li bowl, roemer, peeled lemon rinds and glass beaker, however in the present work Elliger revises the earlier example and sets himself apart from Kalf with the inclusion of the lobster and grapes arranged around the tilted plate in the right half of the composition. Elliger's ability to provide highly detailed optical effects stands out beautifully in this well painted canvas. The composition is carefully and artfully composed to give an impression of being utterly random.
His son Ottmar Elliger the Younger or Ottmar Elliger II (1666–1735) also became a painter.

Bukowskis are grateful to Fred G Meijer of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, the Hague (RKD), for confirming the attribution to Ottomar Elliger on the basis of photographs.