Lot Essay
We are grateful to Mr. Fred Meijer for the attribution, made from a photograph. Compare with a signed painting in the Statens Museum, Copenhagen (inv. no. 765) and with other signed examples in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg and the Museo Civico, Vicenza (E.A. Safarik, in La natura morta in Italia, ed. F. Zeri, Milan, 1989, I, pp. 349-54, figs. 415-20).
Victor probably trained with Melchior d'Hondecoeter in the workshop of Jan-Baptiste Weenix in Amsterdam before leaving for the Veneto, where he was to stay for most of the 1660s, returning to Holland by 1670. In Venice, as the demand for his 'teatri di animali' increased, his paintings quickly found their way into several of the important collections being formed during this period. He was to have a profound influence on the younger Venetian artist Giovanni Agostino Cassana, whose paintings of birds and farm animals owe a substantial debt to the work of Victor (Safarik, op. cit., pp. 349-50).
Victor probably trained with Melchior d'Hondecoeter in the workshop of Jan-Baptiste Weenix in Amsterdam before leaving for the Veneto, where he was to stay for most of the 1660s, returning to Holland by 1670. In Venice, as the demand for his 'teatri di animali' increased, his paintings quickly found their way into several of the important collections being formed during this period. He was to have a profound influence on the younger Venetian artist Giovanni Agostino Cassana, whose paintings of birds and farm animals owe a substantial debt to the work of Victor (Safarik, op. cit., pp. 349-50).