拍品專文
The present paintings form part of a series of the Twelve Months of the Year executed (according to the artist's inscription and date on January) in 1727. Each painting can be indentified with the month it represents through the personification of the signs of the zodiac and by the appropriate actions of the people depicted and the inclusion of produce pertinent to the corresponding month. Thus, June shows a lady being offered ripe fruit before a landscape with harvesters working in a meadow, and a kneeling girl holding a lobster represents the sign of Cancer (June 21-July 22); while November shows a pilgrim and a vegetable seller before a bleak townscape with an archer holding a bow and arrows representing Sagittarius (November 23-December 21).
To further characterize these scenes Snyers used landscapes which would have been recognisable to Flemish collectors of his day; for example, in November the figures stand before the spires of Willebrooke, a town on the Scheldt between Brussels and Antwerp. Amongst the company he depicts a pilgrim dwarf. In the Langford catalogue of 1776 this figure is described as '...a well known pilgrim, who notwithstanding the disadvantages of size and shape paid many visits to our Lady at Loretto'. Snyers painted a further genre portrait of impressive size of this figure, now in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, (Inv. no. 5527) (See W. Bernt, Die Niederländische Maler und Zeichner des 17 Jahrhunderts, III, 1980, pl. 1166).
Probably identifiable as two from the complete set of twelve paintings offered as lot 1 in Pieter Snyers' estate sale held in Antwerp on Aug. 23, 1763, the present paintings together with the months of February, April (in which Snyers paints himself pointing to a small auricula in a pot), and May were subsequently offered for sale at Christie's, London in 1928. These five paintings are also the same size as four offered at Sotheby's, London, Nov. 17, 1982 of which two (January and July) are now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp. The months of April and May are in the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
To further characterize these scenes Snyers used landscapes which would have been recognisable to Flemish collectors of his day; for example, in November the figures stand before the spires of Willebrooke, a town on the Scheldt between Brussels and Antwerp. Amongst the company he depicts a pilgrim dwarf. In the Langford catalogue of 1776 this figure is described as '...a well known pilgrim, who notwithstanding the disadvantages of size and shape paid many visits to our Lady at Loretto'. Snyers painted a further genre portrait of impressive size of this figure, now in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, (Inv. no. 5527) (See W. Bernt, Die Niederländische Maler und Zeichner des 17 Jahrhunderts, III, 1980, pl. 1166).
Probably identifiable as two from the complete set of twelve paintings offered as lot 1 in Pieter Snyers' estate sale held in Antwerp on Aug. 23, 1763, the present paintings together with the months of February, April (in which Snyers paints himself pointing to a small auricula in a pot), and May were subsequently offered for sale at Christie's, London in 1928. These five paintings are also the same size as four offered at Sotheby's, London, Nov. 17, 1982 of which two (January and July) are now in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp. The months of April and May are in the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels