Dead fish guarded by a dog
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| Dead fish guarded by a dog |
|---|
| unknown , probably 17th century |
| Oil on canvas |
| 146 × 180 cm |
| formerly Suermondt Ludwig Museum Aachen |
Dead fish guarded by a dog is a painting that was once in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen . It had the inventory number GK 411. Its whereabouts are unknown.
description
The picture shows an open air scene. In the foreground, piled up in a pyramid, are numerous North Sea fish , surrounded by live poultry. On a tree on the left side of the picture two hissing cats with ruffled fur can be seen, of which the lower one has grabbed one of the fish with its left front paw and is pulling it up from the pile. The diagonal from top left to bottom right, which is started by the two cats, continues in the half upright body of a dog on the right side of the picture, which apparently rests its front paws on a tree trunk behind the fish and barks with bared teeth. While the cats keep their eyes on the dog, the dog has rolled its eyes to the right, but does not turn its head towards the predators, but is shown diagonally from the front as seen by the viewer of the picture. The right end of the painting is a dead, but still standing tree, leaning to the right and entwined with ivy. The background is more or less flat. The signature "F. Snyders ”and the year 1620; both were considered false as early as 1883, when the first catalog of the museum in Aachen was compiled.
At that time the painting was attributed to Giuseppe Recco , a Neapolitan still life painter . Was it likely that the image came from Italy well into the 21st century, because z. If, for example, the exalted expression of the excited animals pointed in this direction, this idea was abandoned after Thomas Fusenig pointed out the origin of the fish depicted. The fact that all these fish seem to come from the North Sea suggests that the picture was made in the Netherlands . Frans Snijders or Frans Snyders , whom the signature names as the author of the picture, was probably not involved in its creation. Hella Robels pointed out that there are no direct references to this picture in his oeuvre and that the animals are more artistically draped in his fish still lifes than in the present painting. Robels also felt more reminiscent of Snyders' pupil Paul de Vos , especially through the depiction of cats , who, however, did not force the expression of animals as much as the painter of the picture under discussion.
Provenance
The picture was in the Fries Collection in Vienna around 1830 . It came into the possession of the Aachen Museum as a donation from Barthold Suermondt in 1882 and was apparently lost in the turmoil of the Second World War .
exhibition
In 2008 and 2009 the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, which was able to fall back on a collection of glass negatives on which some of its former possessions are documented, organized an exhibition on its lost pictures under the title Schattengalerie . Dead fish guarded by a dog was also represented here as No. 101.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Peter van den Brink (ed.), Schattengalerie. The lost works of the painting collection. Edited by Anna Koopstra, Adam C. Oellers, Thomas Fusenig and Michael Rief with the assistance of Christine Vogt, Dirk Tölke and Heinrich Becker , Hirmer-Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7774-4305-8 , pp. 194–196
- ↑ Database for the shadow gallery