Still Life with Grapes and Game

c. 1630

Frans Snyders

Painter, Flemish, 1579 - 1657

A basket overflowing with grapes and surrounded by dead birds and more fruit sits on a long table covered in a scarlet-red cloth in this horizontal still life painting. In the basket at the center of the painting, luminous green, blue-black, red, and purple grapes are piled up in a rough pyramid that overflows the sides. Long stems with broad sage and celery-green leaves edged with brown jut up above and to the side of the bunches of grapes, nearly touching the top edge of the painting. Just in front of the basket to our left, a bowl overflowing with a bunch of purple grapes is tipped toward us. The inside of the bowl is painted with cobalt-blue, geometric, vegetal designs against a white background. Behind it, at the far left, a tall, bronze, footed serving dish stacked high with pale green and black-skinned figs is cut off by the left edge of the composition. In front of and to the right of the central basket, the bodies of about two dozen small and medium-sized birds fill the right half of the tabletop. About ten small birds are arranged along a stick between a pair of dead birds to our left and a pile of several larger birds to our right. The birds’ feathers and bodies are painted in shades of cream and parchment white, ink black, ruby red, tawny brown, and butter and golden yellow. The fruit and birds are lit from the upper left, and the backround is earth brown.

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.

In the early 17th century, Frans Snyders created a new form of still life by combining fruit and game into a single image, and Still Life with Grapes and Game is an outstanding example of this innovation. Snyders's lavish still lifes—wittily arranged and executed with his broad, firm brushstrokes and characteristic palette of bright and direct colors—have a dynamic character unmatched by other artists. The focus of this remarkably well-preserved panel painting is an enormous wicker basket filled with red and green grapes in the center of a table covered by a red tablecloth. A couple of grape vines, their withering leaves still attached, add complexity to the arrangement. A tazza filled with luscious black figs, a Wan-Li bowl with red grapes, and dead game birds —including a brace of partridge, a splendid male pheasant, and a woodcock—surround the central basket. A row of finches, clamped between the two halves of a stick that juts out over the table's edge, adds to the colorful mix. The fruit and game birds fill the picture space and even appear to extend beyond its limits, a device Snyders often used to indicate spatial extension beyond the confines of the picture itself, thereby enhancing the viewer's sense of immediacy.

Born in Antwerp, Snyders trained with Pieter Brueghel the Younger (c. 1564–1637/1638) and probably also with Hendrick van Balen (c. 1574/5–1632). In 1602, at age 23, he joined the city's artists' Guild of Saint Luke. Following a study trip to Italy in 1608–1609, he established his own workshop. He quickly achieved international fame for his imposing still lifes, which include large market scenes, hunting pieces, and tabletops brimming with fruit and dead game. Snyders often collaborated with Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), one of the greatest artists of the 17th century, which demonstrates the esteem with which Snyders was held in his lifetime. Snyders painted the still-life and animal elements in some of Rubens's compositions, while Rubens executed figures in some of Snyders's larger still lifes.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 44


Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Video:  Two-Minute Tour: Clouds, Ice, and Bounty

Join exhibition curator Betsy Wieseman on a two-minute tour of the 2021-2022 exhibition Clouds, Ice, and Bounty.


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Oscar Winterbottom [b. 1891], Horton Hall, Northampshire; by descent in his family;[1] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 8 July 2005, no. 50); (Johnny van Haeften Ltd., London, and Colnaghi, London); purchased 15 February 2006 by NGA.
[1] This provenance is given in the catalogue of Christie's (London) 8 July 2005 sale. The Horton Hall mansion, sold c. 1899 to George Winterbottom [1861-1934], was demolished in 1936.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2021

  • Clouds, Ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2021, no. 5, repro.

Bibliography

2006

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. "Frans Snyders, Still Life with Grapes and Game." _Bulletin / National Gallery of Art, no. 35 (Fall 2006): 20-21, repro.

2020

  • Libby, Alexandra. “From Personal Treasures to Public Gifts: The Flemish Painting Collection at the National Gallery of Art.” In America and the Art of Flanders: Collecting Paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck, and their Circles, edited by Esmée Quodbach. The Frick Collection Studies in the History of Art Collecting in America 5. University Park, 2020: 142.

Wikidata ID

Q20177111


You may be interested in

Loading Results