A hunting still life of partridges with four Springer spaniels, a hawk, a game-bag and belt and other hunting gear in a landscape

This amazing work was painted by the Antwerp animal and still life painter Carstian Luyckx. Though scarcely known to a wider public today, this versatile artist was successful and held in high regard in seventeenth-century Antwerp. Carstian Luyckx trained under Philips de Marlier and in 1642 with Frans Francken III. In 1645 he was accepted as a master of the local guild and is documented in Antwerp up to August 1653. To judge from the French inscriptions on many of his later works, he may have moved south, away from Antwerp. Only two dated works are known to exist, making it difficult to establish a chronology for his oeuvre. A part of his output consists of game still lives influenced by Frans Snyders and especially by Jan Fyt, from which the present composition is an excellent example.
Fred Meijer of the RKD, The Hague, considers the hithero unknown painting to be a key piece in the oeuvre of Carstian Luyckx, datable to the artist's transitional phase between his Antwerp and French periode in the 1650s (verbal communication upon personal inspection of the original on 26 September 2013).