.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Dated by Robels to circa 1616-20, this picture can be compared stylistically with two still lifes of the same approximate date, each depicting A bowl of fruit on a table (Robels, op. cit., pp. 263-4, nos. 128-9), in which the songbirds in the present picture recur. A copy of the present painting is in the Romanian National Art Gallery, Bucharest (inv. no. 80.785/2.502).
This is an antecedent of a type of animal genre painting that was popularised by Snyders, concentrating on the instinctual behaviour of the animals depicted. In the present work, the focus of the picture remains on the still-life element, but over the 1620s this was to change more to the actions of the animals depicted: as for example in the Monkeys in a larder of 1620-8 depicted in the celebrated Art Collection of Cornelis van der Geest by Willem van Haecht (Antwerp, Rubenshuis). Other examples, including the Monkeys stealing fruit of circa 1640-60 in the Louvre, Paris, depict a similar - and, appropriately for these pictures, primarily frugivore - Diana monkey [Cercopithecus diana; named for the white stripe across the forehead that recalls the shape of the eponymous Goddess' bow] as that in the present painting.
This is an antecedent of a type of animal genre painting that was popularised by Snyders, concentrating on the instinctual behaviour of the animals depicted. In the present work, the focus of the picture remains on the still-life element, but over the 1620s this was to change more to the actions of the animals depicted: as for example in the Monkeys in a larder of 1620-8 depicted in the celebrated Art Collection of Cornelis van der Geest by Willem van Haecht (Antwerp, Rubenshuis). Other examples, including the Monkeys stealing fruit of circa 1640-60 in the Louvre, Paris, depict a similar - and, appropriately for these pictures, primarily frugivore - Diana monkey [Cercopithecus diana; named for the white stripe across the forehead that recalls the shape of the eponymous Goddess' bow] as that in the present painting.