- 27
Frans Snyders Antwerp 1579 - 1657
Description
- Frans Snyders
- A still life of a basket of grapes, birds, including a partridge, snipe, sparrow and finch, two blue-and-white wan-li porcelain bowls with langoustines, a knife, two wine glasses, a roemer, stoneware ewer and a parcel gilt salt cellar upon a stone ledge
signed lower left: F. SNYDERS.FECIT
and inscribed in an old hand on the reverse of the panel: Snyders- oil on panel
Provenance
With D.A. Hoogendijk & Co., Amsterdam;
Private collection, London;
Acquired from the above by a Swiss Private collector;
By whom sold, London, Sotheby’s, 3-4 December 1997, lot 63, for £199,500;
With Rob Smeets, Milan;
From whom acquired by the present owner.
Literature
E. Greindl, Les Peintres Flamands de Nature Morte au XVIIe Siècle, Brussels 1956, p. 182;
E. Greindl, Les Peintres Flamands de Nature Morte au XVIIe Siècle, Sterrebeek 1983, p. 375, no. 93;
H. Robels, Frans Snyders, Munich 1989, p. 249, cat. no. 102, reproduced p. 250, no. 102 (without mention of the signature).
Catalogue Note
Though very few dated works by Snyders exist, Robels (see Literature) dates this work to circa 1612-13 by comparison with other still lifes of the first half of the 1610s; for example the Still Life of Birds, Grapes and Artichoke in the Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf (Robels, op. cit., p. 250, cat. no. 105, reproduced p. 251). She further notes that this painting may well be identifiable with that recorded by Gustav Waagen in Sir Culling Eardley’s collection at Belvedere, Kent, as hanging in the Billiard Room: “Two blue earthen vessels, one of them containing crabs: a jug, dead birds, and light-coloured grapes. Admirably carried out in a clear silvery tone” (G. Waagen, Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain, London 1857, p. 278). A variant was sold in Cologne, Lempertz, 8 May 1928, lot 19, and a larger copy on canvas was sold in Paris, Palais Galliéra, 2 December 1970, lot 150.