Still Life with Flowers, Grapes, and Small Game Birds
Frans Snyders·c. 1615
Historical Context
Snyders's Still Life with Flowers, Grapes, and Small Game Birds, painted around 1615, combines floral display with game still life in a composition of characteristic Flemish abundance. Snyders was the leading still-life and animal painter in early seventeenth-century Antwerp, collaborating frequently with Rubens and producing monumental displays of natural abundance for aristocratic dining halls. This work demonstrates his ability to unify diverse natural elements within a single, energetic composition.
Technical Analysis
Snyders's oil-on-panel technique renders the varied textures of flowers, fruit, and game birds with extraordinary material specificity. The energetic, confident brushwork captures each element — translucent petals, glossy grapes, soft feathers — with the vivid naturalism that made his still lifes among the most celebrated in European painting.
Provenance
Private collection, Germany.[1] (sale, Dobiaschofsky Auktionen AG, Bern, 2-5 May 1979, no. 706); probably Reiner and Elisabeth Schöpke, Frauenfeld, Switzerland;[2] (sale, Sotheby’s, London, 29 October and 5 November 1986, 1st day, no. 107).[3] (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 14 January 1988, no. 95). Mauro Herlitzka, Buenos Aires, by 4 January 1990;[4] (Jack Kilgore & Co., Inc., New York), by February 1994; sold 24 February 1994 to Mr. [1931-2018] and Mrs. John Ely Pflieger, Washington, D.C.; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 20 October 2018, no. 30, as _Roses, Tulips, and Other Flowers_, withdrawn); gift 2020 to NGA. [1] A typed label preserved on the back of the painting and described in the 1979 sale catalogue is dated February 1920, attributes the work to Snyders, and is signed by Dutch art historian Cornelius Hofstede de Groote. Two other versions of the composition exist: one on copper by Snyders (now in the Bavarian State Collections), and a copy on panel by Jan Fyt after the NGA painting (current location unknown). Provenances of the two versions on panel have been confused in sale catalogues. However, small but distinct differences in the depiction of the tazza and one of the vine branches allow the two paintings to be identified; see the notes by Pim Arts, 2019 summer intern, in NGA curatorial files. There is an edging of torn printed paper scraps surrounding the reverse of the painting, and on one of these can be read the words “M. Huguet,” “planches,” and “le plus magni…” Huguet was [Louis] Jules Huguet, who served as auction master (commissaire-priseur) at Hôtel Drouot in Paris between 1884 and 1923. Whether this is taken from a specific sale catalogue that included the painting, or is just a random scrap of paper, is not yet known. [2] The Schöpke's name is listed in the provenance in the 2018 Christie’s sale catalogue. A handwritten note in German, indicating a loan by the Schöpkes in 1979, is on the reverse of the painting within a rectangular stamp with the wording “Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur.” The 1979 loan has not yet been identified. The painting was not included in the 1979-1980 exhibition _Stilleben in Europa_, held in Münster and Baden-Baden. [3] The 1986 sale catalogue indicates that the unnamed consignor(s) to this sale purchased the painting at the 1979 sale in Bern. [4] Documentation in NGA curatorial files, provided by the Pflieger family, includes a letter of this date written to Herlitzka by Hella Robels, author of the 1989 catalogue raisonné of works by Snyders. Herlitzka probably purchased the painting at the 1988 auction, but this has not been confirmed.
