Description
This Flemish market stall overflowing with dead game is enlivened by fighting roosters, an aggressive cat, and a pickpocket. An early example of Frans Snyders’s animated combination of highly ornamental still-life elements with secondary figures and a low viewpoint, this scene might have adorned the dining room of an aristocratic collector. Snyders was the leading Flemish painter of monumental still lifes. He regularly collaborated with his fellow Antwerp artist Peter Paul Rubens, contributing fruits and animals to Rubens’s compositions.
Provenance
Olléon collection by late 19th century; by family descent to Jean Olléon, Paris until at least 1970 [according to letter from Hella Robels, dated July 31, 1988, in curatorial file]. Galerie Birtschansky, Paris, 1980. Galerie Maurice Segoura, New York, 1981; sold to the Art Institute, 1981.
Accession Number
62042
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
212 × 308 cm (83 1/2 × 121 1/4 in.); Framed: 251.5 × 348 × 10.2 cm (99 × 137 × 4 in.)
Classification
oil on canvas
Credit Line
Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection