Pieter Snyers (Antwerp 1681-1752) Flowers in a glass vase with reptiles in preserve jars and shells on a wooden table; and Fruit in a wicker basket with a snake in a preserve jar and shells and a chestnut on a ledge. Photo Christie's Image Ltd 2014

The first signed 'P: Snÿers' (lower center); the second signed 'Peeter.Snÿers' (lower center), oil on copper , each 8 1/8 x 6¼ in. (20.6 x 15.8 cm.), a pair (2). Estimate $40,000 – $60,000

Provenance: Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 19 May 1993, lot 46 ($57,500), where acquired by the Hascoe family.

Exhibited: Greenwich, Bruce Museum, Old Master Paintings from the Hascoe Collection, 2 April-29 May 2005, nos. 18a and 18b (catalogue by P. Sutton).

Notes: Pieter Snyers, called le Saint due to his piety, was born into an affluent family in Antwerp. He studied with Alexander van Bredael in 1694, and was accepted as a master of the Brussels guild in 1705. In 1707 he joined the guild in his native city of Antwerp, where he would remain the rest of his life, aside from a brief journey to England in the 1720s, where he appears to have worked as a portrait painter (P. Sutton, op. cit.). In addition to painting traditional flower still lifes and game pieces, Snyers specialized in still lifes that contain what Sutton describes as "an amateur scientist's interests" (ibid.). These paintings often include closely-observed shells and other exotic naturalia that one would expect to encounter in a cabinet of curiosities. In the present flower still life, for example, he includes a murex, conch, whelk, tun and two cone shells, along with labeled jars of snakes and lizards. On the table below the basket of fruit in the pendant, Snyers represents a cone shell, conchs, two volutes and a terrestrial banded tree snail, alongside yet another jar containing a snake specimen. While it remains unclear whether Snyers ever received any formal scientific training, his surviving works seem to indicate that he was fascinated with the wonders of the natural world. Snyers' formidable collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings was sold in Antwerp in 1752.  

Christie's. OLD MASTER PAINTINGS, 4 June 2014, New York, Rockefeller Plaza. http://www.christies.com/