A pewter flagon, a salt cellar, a roemer with silver-gilt stem, an upturned glass roemer, oysters, and a dish on a partly draped table

In July 1642, Willem Claesz. Heda registered three pupils in Haarlem's Guild of Saint Luke: Maerten Boelema, Hendrick Heerschoop, and his son, Gerrit Willemsz. Heda. The young Heda adopted his father's style and made copies of his breakfast scenes, causing confusion between the father's and son's works. In his book on still-life painting in the Netherlands, Sam Segal attempted to differentiate the two hands, noting that the father signed his paintings and workshop collaborations as 'HEDA', while his son signed his independent pictures 'HeDA' (S. Segal, A Prosperous Past: The Sumptuous Still Life in the Netherlands, 1600–1700, Delft, 1988, pp. 133-136). This simplified categorization, however, does not account for the many other variations in signatures, making separation of their oeuvres even more complex. Gerrit's slick handling of textures, as seen in the present painting, distinguishes his work from that of his father.

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs (Private communication, November 2025).