Frans Snyders Antwerp 1579 - 1657

This is an early work by Snyders, probably painted circa 1610.  It is directly comparable with his unsigned picture of a peasant woman selling poultry which was on the Art Market in 1984.¹  Both pictures are on panels of similar format and size, but are probably not pendants.  It is not clear if the stall-holder proffering a hare is by another hand, as is usual in Snyders’ pictures.  He does not resemble any figure in any other work by Snyders, and may thus have been painted by Snyders himself.

In early works such as this, Snyders was working within the tradition of market still lifes established by Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer in the 16th Century, and still very much in vogue in Antwerp in the early years of the 17th Century.  Although Snyders continued to paint market still lifes throughout his career, he developed the genre himself so that his mature pictures of this subject owe no formal debt to the older tradition.    

We are grateful to Fred G. Meijer for confirming that this is an early work by Snyders, on the basis of photographs.

1 Sold, London, Christie’s, 14 December 1984, lot 70; see H. Robels, Frans Snyders. Stilleben und Tiermaler 1579-1657, Munich 1989, p. 174, no. 5, reproduced p. 173.  Robels dates it before 1610.