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拍品专文
In the 1620s, Aesop's Fables became a popular theme in Flemish painting, and became somewhat of a specialty of the animal painter Frans Snyders. Archival documents indicate that Snyders executed many Aesopic subjects, including a group of some twenty paintings for Diego Mexía Felípez de Guzmán (c.1580-1655), Viscount de Butarque and 1st Marques de Leganés, one of the greatest collectors of the period, who commissioned them as overdoor decorations. For these large-scale compositions, Snyders drew inspiration from the prints of Marcus Geeraerts I, whose engravings were used to illustrate a 1567 Flemish vernacular edition of the fables.
The present painting was long considered to be by Frans Snyders, on the basis of its compositional relationship to an upright rendition of the same theme dated circa 1636, now in the Prado Museum, Madrid (inv. no. P00175). It was only after Wolfgang Adler's monographic study of Jan Wildens' oeuvre that the landscape was recognized as the latter's work (loc. cit.). Wildens is first recorded in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1596 as the apprentice of Pieter van der Hulst, and by 1604 he had registered as a master in his own right. He became a specialist in landscape painting and frequently collaborated with leading Antwerp painters, including Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Frans Francken II, Paul de Vos, Gerhard Seghers, and Snyders himself, providing landscape backgrounds for their compositions. Adler argues the present painting is one such collaboration, tentatively attributing the animals to Snyders, and dating the work to circa 1630 (loc. cit.). Hella Robels includes this painting in her catalogue raisonné of Snyders' works, likewise noting his collaboration with Wildens (loc. cit.). More recently, Fred G. Meijer, to whom we are grateful for proposing the present attribution on the basis of photographs, has questioned the dating to 1630s, as it is unlikely that this variant predates the painting in the Prado (written communication, December 2025).
The present painting was long considered to be by Frans Snyders, on the basis of its compositional relationship to an upright rendition of the same theme dated circa 1636, now in the Prado Museum, Madrid (inv. no. P00175). It was only after Wolfgang Adler's monographic study of Jan Wildens' oeuvre that the landscape was recognized as the latter's work (loc. cit.). Wildens is first recorded in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1596 as the apprentice of Pieter van der Hulst, and by 1604 he had registered as a master in his own right. He became a specialist in landscape painting and frequently collaborated with leading Antwerp painters, including Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Frans Francken II, Paul de Vos, Gerhard Seghers, and Snyders himself, providing landscape backgrounds for their compositions. Adler argues the present painting is one such collaboration, tentatively attributing the animals to Snyders, and dating the work to circa 1630 (loc. cit.). Hella Robels includes this painting in her catalogue raisonné of Snyders' works, likewise noting his collaboration with Wildens (loc. cit.). More recently, Fred G. Meijer, to whom we are grateful for proposing the present attribution on the basis of photographs, has questioned the dating to 1630s, as it is unlikely that this variant predates the painting in the Prado (written communication, December 2025).