Pieter Snijers

Essay:

Pieter Snijers (or Snyers) was born in Antwerp and became apprenticed to the studio of Alexander van Bredael at the age of 13. It was in that year (1694) that he appeared in the guild list for Antwerp, and in 1741 became one of the directors of the Antwerp Academy. Snijers married Maria Catherina van der Boven in 1726 after he returned from living in London where he had been since 1720. He spent his later years painting and producing engravings both after his own work and that of other Old Masters.

Snijers was fortunate enough to be the son of a wealthy merchant. The family fortune allowed him the freedom to collect paintings (indeed, he had no fewer than three posthumous sales) and to explore his own talents as an artist. His subject matter is a wide range of genres and he experimented in engraving and painting on copper, but overall his style tends towards meticulous rendering of his subjects in the semi-scientific tradition of Jan van Kessel. In addition to painting traditional flower still lifes and game pieces, he specialised in still lifes that contain what Peter Sutton describes as "an amateur scientist's interests". These paintings often include closely observed shells and other exotic naturalia that one would expect to encounter in a cabinet of curiosities.

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This charming forest floor scene is one of the more decorative pictures within the sottobosco sub-genre. These works are often filled with snakes, toads and snapping lizards illustrating nature on a hostile minuscule scale. However, our picture is rather more peaceful and fecund with wild strawberries, porcini mushrooms, plums, and apples, delicious both to Snijers' mouse but also to his human audience. This was typical of Snijers who just as often worked in the cabinet painting tradition of small still lifes of fruit and insects in copper exemplified by Jan van Kessel where colour and refinement was crucial.

The scene is not completely without implied threat. A hedgehog is eyeing the eggs in the fallen bird's nest. A goldfinch perching on the tree looks down as though mourning its lost eggs. Rather pleasingly the mouse in the lower right corner appears to be modelled from Jan Brueghel the Elder's depictions of mice across various drawings and paintings.

A similar sottobosco by Snijers, through around twice as large as the present picture, with a hedgehog, bird's nest, and fruit belongs to the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (inv. 3665).

Provenance:

With S. Nijstad Oude Kunst BV, The Hague, by 1954 (as Pieter Gysels);
Sale (Collections of L.E. Cats and W. C. Smidt van Gelder); Amsterdam, Frederik Muller, 25 Nov. 1958, lot 6 (as Pieter Gijsels);
Anon. sale; Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, 11 June 1974, lot 233 (as Pieter Gijsels);
Anon. sale, London, Sotheby's 11 April 1990, lot 27 (as Pieter Snijers);
Private collection, France.