Workshop of Jacob Jordaens Antwerp 1593 - 1678

Ridder Fernand de Wouters d'Oplinter, Brussels;
Thence by descent to the present owner.

Antwerp, Tentoonstelling Jacob Jordaens, 1905, no. 57;
Brussels, L'Exposition Jordaens et son Atelier, 1928, no. 75. 

M. Rooses, Jordaens' Leben und Werke, Stuttgart etc. 1890, p. 287;
Album der Tentoonstelling Jacob Jordaens, Antwerp 1905, unpaginated, reproduced no. 57;
Revue des Arts, no. 56, p. 12;
L. van Puyvelde, Jordaens, Paris/Brussels 1953, p. 96 (as a replica of the Kassel picture).

Jordaens evidently liked this subject which is taken from one of Aesop's Fables, since he painted a number of versions of it.  The earliest is probably the picture at Kassel, Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, which dates from about 1620.  The figures, though not the setting, of the present work broadly follow the Kassel picture.  Subsequent treatments of it in the galleries at Gothenburg, Munich and Brussels develop the theme in the early 1620s.  The present picture does not closely resemble any of the other known autograph versions, nor the two period engravings after Jordaens of the subject.  Apart from the figures, many parts of the painting are unique to this version. Its handling is sketch-like, despite the large-scale canvas support, and there are several pentimenti.  It should therefore be considered a rapid re-working of the subject by an artist in Jordaens' workshop intent on creating a variant rather than a replica.