Carefully differentiated by texture, Frans Snyder's display of wild game and fruit celebrates the abundance of the land. In the seventeenth century, noblemen were permitted to hunt and sell game at public markets. This work originally hung, probably in an aristocratic household, with a complimentary fish-market scene.
Apprenticed to Pieter Brueghel II, Snyders traveled to Rome and Milan before entering the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp. Well known for his still lifes, animal paintings, and hunting scenes, Snyders occasionally, as here, collaborated with his brother-in-law, portrait painter Cornelis de Vos, who executed the figure. A widower and childless at the time of his death, Snyders left his estate to his sister Maria, in whose memory Jan Boeckhorst painted the triptych in Lacma's collection (M.2008.90a-c).
