Still Life with Dead Game, Fruit and Vegetables

c. 1616 - c. 1620

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 55.9 cm × width 87.3 cm
outer size: depth 7.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, bottom right: F. Snÿders. fecit

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: I. Verslype / Z. Benders, RMA, 5 August 2008
paint samples: Z. Benders, RMA, 5 August 2008
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 4 September 2009

Provenance

…; collection Jan Hendrik van Heemskerk, Heer van Achttienhoven (1698-1730, The Hague); his widow Anna Petronella van Heemskerk, née Schuylenburch (1693-1766); her sale, The Hague (S. Rietmulder), 29 March 1770 sqq., no. 100 (‘SNYDERS. (F) Een stil leeven. P. Hoog 22, breed 32 duim [57.5 x 83.7 cm] Op een Tafel bedekt met een rood kleed, ziet man eenig dood Wild, als een Haas, Patrys, Snippen, Vinken enz. waarby een vergulde Schaal op een Voet, en daarin diverse fruiten. Wyders op de tafel nog twee Glazen en een Schenkkan’), fl. 140, to Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague;¹ his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam, (‘François Snyders. Représentant toute sorte de gibier mort, étalé sur un table, avec un vase rempli de fruits, bois, h. 21½ l. 33½ [56.2 x 87.6 cm]’);² from whom, fl. 100,000, with 136 other paintings en bloc (known as the ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), to the museum, by decree of Lodewijk Napoleon King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1809;³ on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 2002-10

Object number: SK-A-378

The artist

Frans Snijders (Antwerp 1579 - Antwerp 1657)

The still-life painter Frans Snijders, or as he signed official documents Franchoijs or François Snijders, was baptized in the Antwerp Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk, on 11 November 1579; he died on 19 August 1657 and was buried in the Minderbroederskerk. He was the son of a successful innkeeper. In 1593 he was apprenticed to Pieter Brueghel II (1564-1638); from an unknown date he was also taught by Hendrik van Balen I (1574/75-1632) before becoming a master in the guild of St Luke in 1602. He may soon have travelled to Italy for his first, extant signed and dated work of 1603 (known only from a reproduction)⁴ has an Italianate character. However, he is not documented there until September 1608. He had returned to Antwerp by July 1609; his first extant dated picture after this return is of 1612.⁵ The following year Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625) told Cardinal-Archbishop Federico Borromeo of the great progress Snijders had made. He was ‘unico in quella professione’ and continuously busy.

His association with Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) began soon after his return to Antwerp and was first demonstrated in his execution of the prominent still life in Rubens’s Recognition of Philopoemen (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). They were to join forces intermittently for the rest of Rubens’s life; their last joint endeavour was eighteen pictures commissioned by King Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665), completed shortly before Rubens’s death. In Rubens’s last will Snijders was named, along with Jan Wildens (1584/1586-1653) and Jacob Moermans (1602-1653), as an advisor to the estate on the subsequent sales of works of art.

Snijders married Margriet de Vos on 23 October 1611 and lived for ten years on the Korte Gasthuisstraat. On 21 January 1622 his purchase of the house De Fortuyne on the Keizerstraat was completed. That his neighbour was the wealthy patrician Nicolaas Rockox (1560-1640) is evidence enough of the artist’s prosperity.⁶ His marriage proved childless and his wife predeceased him by ten years.

Robels divided his long career into three periods: 1593-1618, 1619-1640 and after 1640; his last extant dated work is from 1653.⁷ She assembled a painted oeuvre of some 300 works, and while the number of contemporary copies perhaps points to an active workshop, it was probably not on the same scale or run on similar lines as that of Rubens.⁸ Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand reported that he was a slow worker. He probably turned to his brother-in-law Paul de Vos (1595-1678), an independent master from 1620, to help him meet his commitments.

Among other artists with whom he collaborated, playing either the main or the subsidiary role, were Jan Boeckhorst (1604-1668), Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert (1613/14-1654), Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), Abraham Janssens I (1575-1632), Theodor van Thulden (1606-1669), Cornelis de Vos (his brother-in-law, 1584-1651), and Erasmus Quellinus II (1607-1678).

Van Dyck’s portraits of Snijders and his wife (Frick Collection, New York) are considered to be among his masterpieces.⁹

REFERENCES
P. Rombouts and T. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere historische archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, ondere zinspreuk: ‘Wt Ionsten Versaemt’, 2 vols., Antwerp/The Hague 1864-76, I, p. 373, 418, 456, 528, 575 and II, 1876 (1961), p. 54, 185, 282, 284; C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermartste schilders, architecte, beldtowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuwe, Antwerp s.a. [1662], p. 61 (for a reprint of the print in Meyssens Images de diverses Hommes d’Esprit … (F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700, Amsterdam/Roosendaal 1948-, XIV, p. 27)); G. Crivelli, Giovanni Brueghel, pittor fiammingo, o sue lettere e quadretti esistenti presso l’Ambrosiana, Milan 1868, pp. 111-12, 120, 135, 198; H. Robels, Frans Snyders, Stilleben- und Tiermaler, 1579-1657, Munich 1989 and in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., Basingstoke 1996, XXVIII, pp. 901-04; S. Koslow, Frans Snyders: The Noble Estate. Seventeenth-Century Still-Life and Animal Painting in the Southern Netherlands, Antwerp 1995, pp. 13-29; E. Duverger, Fontes historiae Artis Neerlandicae Bronnen voor de Kunstgeschiedenis van de Nederlanden: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Antwerpse kunstinventarissen uit de zeventiende eeuw, 13 vols., Brussels 1984-2004, I, p. 297, III, 1987, p. 70 and VII, 1993, pp. 187-89 for Snijders’s wills of 1613, 1627 and 1655; for the will of 1641 with the codicil of 1646, Robels 1989, p. 52 and note 155

Entry

The support of this painting consists of a single plank, from an oak tree grown in the German/Netherlandish area, which would have been ready for use from as early as 1585, but more plausibly, some ten years later. The reverse is coated with a ground, a cross-section of which shows a white layer probably of chalk beneath a transparent brown layer in which black and red particles of pigment have been added. There is a bevel on all sides, although it is incomplete at the bottom edge where there is a small loss to it. The ground is a white colour, the imprimatura layer is grey; a cross-section shows two layers: one solid white, probably of chalk mixture, beneath a grey mixture of white pigment together with finely mixed carbon black. The support is painted up to the edges. The still-life elements at the centre and to the left were reserved against the cloth; the base of the tazza and enamelled pitcher were not reserved, although the fruits were.

There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this signed work. The wine glass and goblet are less assured in handling and may be additions, but old, for they are mentioned in the description given in the 1770 sale catalogue. The support is of a single piece of oak timber from a tree grown in the German/Netherlandish region, which would have been ready for use in 1585 and more plausibly from a decade later.

The still life chiefly consists in a wine glass, a goblet and an enamelled pitcher, a silver-gilt tazza and a Kraak porcelain bowl; a dead hare and game birds; a bunch of asparagus, an artichoke head, two lemons and strawberries.

The same components of game, birds, fruit and vegetables, with the addition of a lobster, appear in a still life by Snijders which has been dated 1605-10.¹⁰ Very similar but with a more compact composition is a work dated 1613¹¹ and a signed work at Kassel.¹² But shadows from the raking light are hardly in evidence in the Rijksmuseum picture and for this reason Robels’s dating of circa 1616 is acceptable. Because the tonality of Snijders’s still lifes lightened as his career advanced,¹³ an even later date might be considered. The shadows are still quite marked in the Boston picture of 1616,¹⁴ where the same tazza beside an enamelled pitcher also occurs.

As in contemporary flower still lifes, the vegetables and fruit shown here ripened at different times of the year. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) commenting to the English exile and connoisseur Tobie Matthew on Snijders’s art at this time, singled out his ability to depict dead birds. Matthew reported Rubens as saying: ‘The talent of Snyders, is to represent beasts but especiallie Birds altogether dead, and wholly without anie action’.¹⁵ The context of Rubens’s remarks led him to be unwittingly restrictive, for the artist shows here a talent if not mastery in the execution of fruit and vegetables as well. The methodically arranged components point to his having executed a preparatory drawing, of which however there would appear to be no trace.¹⁶

Koslow has shown that this type of still life may have been inspired, or at least validated, by examples from classical antiquity as described by the elder Philostratus in the Imagines popularized by Blaise de Vigenère’s translation into French.¹⁷ The Xenia as there described in no. 31 of book I were rendered by de Vigenère into French as Presens Rustiques.¹⁸

The silver-gilt tazza depicted here was a favourite of Snijders,¹⁹ and also appears on some table tops decorated by Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625) about 1615.²⁰

Gregory Martin, 2022

Literature

H. Robels, Frans Snyders, Stilleben- und Tiermaler, 1579-1657, Munich 1989, no. 121

Collection catalogues

1809, p. 66, no. 284; 1864, p. 143, no. 304; 1872, p. 149, no. 312; 1880, p. 419, no. 489 (as life size); 1903, p. 248, no. 2208; 1934, p. 264, no. 2208; 1976, p. 516, no. A 378

Citation

G. Martin, 2022, 'Frans Snijders, Still Life with Dead Game, Fruit and Vegetables, c. 1616 - c. 1620', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5467

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