English: Description in Flemish paintings C. 1600-C. 1800 III, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2010, cat.no. 188:

Technical notes: The painting’s support consists of two pieces of medium-weight, plain weave fabric, sawn with a horizontal seam near centre. Paint is applied over a light, beige ground layer, quite thinly in the greens and blues of the landscape and in the heron’s bluish plumage, more thickly in the whites and in the sky, with rich impastos in the highlights and whites of the birds’ plumage. The heron’s plumage is painted very thinly in subtle gradations of blue applied over a reddish underpaint, with thick impastos in the downy whites of the chest and neck; the falcons’ feathers are painted in tonal gradations of warm browns and greys, with patches of white to indicate downy underlayers, and crispy scumbled white highlights. The structure and appearance of the feathers is admirably portrayed, as well as their feel, fluffy and soft at the birds’ necks, where the feathers have parted, but stiffer and smoother at the periphery of the wings.

The painting is generally in good condition. A thick layer of old varnish is present, only slightly discoloured. The paint surface is encrusted with dirt. The paint layers display a fine overall craquelure. Retouching along the left, right and top edges cover abrasion and minor losses of the paint and ground layers. Scattered small retouches occur along the horizontal join (on the right side) and in the falcon at the upper right, but mainly concentrated in the sky. A vertical scratch through the paint layers is visible above the left wing of the heron.

Provenance: Possibly Nicolas Sohier, “Het Huis met de Hoofden”, Keizersgracht 123, Amsterdam, until 1634; possibly Louis de Geer I, Amsterdam, until 1652; Laurens de Geer; Gerard de Geer; Louis de Geer III, Amsterdam; Maria Christina de Geer and Margareta Elisabeth Trigland, Amsterdam; Louis de Geer IV; Jean Jacques de Geer, Finspång, Sweden. Carl Edvard Ekman, Finspång, 1856; Axel Ekman, Mo gård, Mariestad; purchased from Louis de Geer, Sunnanå, Brunna, 1990.

Exhibited: Lövsta, 1990, no. 1.

Bibliography: Granberg 1886, no. 174 (as Frans Snyders); Granberg 1893; Göthe 1894, no. 81 (as attributed to Frans Snyders); Granberg 1929–1931, I, p. 59, III, p. 71.

A dramatic portrayal of a heron attacked in mid-air by two peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus), while a goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) hovers below. The falcon at the upper right has brass bells tied to its claws. The heron, however, is no easy prey. Lying on its back with spread wings, as if falling towards the ground, it still defends itself vigorously with open beak and claws. Far below, viewed in an extreme bird’s eye perspective, is a verdant rural landscape with lakes and tiny figures of shepherds with their flock of sheep and a mounted huntsman accompanied by a hunting dog and two falconers on foot carrying falcons or hawks for bird hunting.

This painting depicting a hunt with falcons seems to be a copy or a variant of a lost original by the Antwerp animal and still life painter Frans Snyders, produced by workshop assistants after the master’s design. It can probably be identified with a painting, referred to as “de Rijgersvlugt” (“flight, or escape, of the heron”), listed in a will drawn up at Amsterdam in 1741 on behalf of Maria Christina de Geer, great-granddaughter of Louis de Geer I, at which time it was regarded as an autograph work by Snyders. The painting is described as hanging, together with another by the same artist depicting “de Vos en de Craan”, probably the Fable of the Fox and the Heron (see no. 184), in a large room (“Grote Sael”) situated on the ground floor facing the garden of the house in the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam that Maria Christina and her sister, Margareta Elisabeth, had inherited in 1731 from their brother, the Amsterdam merchant Louis de Geer III. Both paintings were later transferred to the Castle of Finspång in Sweden by Louis de Geer IV, an uncle of Charles de Geer of Leufsta, in 1758.1 As early as 1611/1612 Snyders was called upon to paint the mighty eagle in Peter Paul Rubens’ Prometheus Bound (Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts), and by the late 1610s he had acquired a widespread reputation as Antwerp’s leading painter of birds.2 While Snyders’ extant oeuvre does not include any works on the theme depicted in the present picture, an inventory drawn up on 21 February 1655 of the paintings collection of Diego Mexía, Marquis of Leganés, the artist’s most avid Spanish collector, lists a painting that is clearly related to this work, explicitly identified as a fable (fabula): “a heron defending herself with her claws and beak against the attack of two falcons”.3The emblematic motif of a heron, lying on its back, while attacked in mid-air by falcons, also figures prominently in several works formerly attributed to the master himself, but now usually given to his followers, such as a picture possibly by Jan Fyt in a private collection in Barcelona,4 and a close variant attributed to Paul de Vos in Madrid (Museo del Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando).5 Both pictures – featuring a second heron under attack and, below, a flock of frightened ducks at the edge of a pond – include falcons in poses identical to those of the present work, clearly copied after the same model. Each of the predatory birds in this painting, although a workshop copy, is memorable for its fierceness, its powerful articulation, and for the skilful depiction of its plumage.

The art of hunting with trained hawks or falcons, particularly of heron, a very ancient form of hunting, remained a favourite pastime of the European aristocracy throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. While the right to hunt in the South Netherlands was a seigneurial privilege, Brabant’s constitution guaranteed the right to “hunt nobly” to all land-owning frequently in the calendar pages of medieval books of hours, in hunting manuals and in tapestries.7However, a picture such as this may also have symbolic meaning. Thus, in 16th-century emblem books the image of a heron attacked by a falcon was associated with the motto “Exitus in dubio est” (“the outcome of the struggle is uncertain”), and the poem accompanying this emblem in Joachim Camerarius’ Symbolorum et emblematum ex volatilibus et insectis, III (Nuremberg 1595) relates it, specifically, to the fickle fortunes of war, explaining that he who might seem victorious at first, nevertheless is often vanquished in the end.8 Images of herons attacked by birds of prey, though not included among the Aesopic fables illustrated by Flemish printmaker Marcus Gheeraerts,9 a prime source of inspiration for Snyders, were also clearly recognized as fable pictures in the 17th century, as demonstrated by the 1655 Leganés inventory (see above). Documents indicate that Snyders painted Aesopic fable pictures in the 1620s and ’30s and, probably, through the 1640s as well, although few examples survive. The Marquis of Leganés, who seems to have had a particularly fondness for animal iconography, owned about 58 paintings by Snyders, among which were some twenty Aesopic fables.10 CF

1 Until 1809 the Finspång collection comprised further works by Snyders, including a Boar Hunt, a Wolf Hunt, and The Fox Caught in a Trap (Schlangenbad-Georgenborn, Coll. Hohenbuchau), which later entered the collection of Samuel af Ugglas at Forsmark, as well as the large Deer Hunt (see no. 185), probably executed together with his brother-in-law Paul de Vos. See Robels 1989, cat.nos. 248, 254. For a brief history of the De Geer collection in Amsterdam and at Finspång Castle, see Copenhagen 2008, pp. 97–117 (B. Noldus). 2 As evidenced by a letter sent by Toby Matthew to Dudley Carleton, the English ambassador to The Hague, on 25 February 1617; for which see Rooses-Ruelens 1898, II, p. 99, doc. CXLVII I, cited by Koslow 1995, p. 18. 3 See López Navío 1962, no. 212: “fabula de Snyders de una garca acomchida de 2 alcones y ella se defiende con las unas y el pico arriba, en 600 [reales]”; for which see also Robels 1989, cat. no. V47. The previous item listed in the 1655 Leganés inventory was a painting with a related subject, the Aesopic Fable of the Hen and her Chicks: “fabula de Snyders de una gallina que guarda sus pollos de 3 abes de Rapina, junto a una casa de 2 baras y un alto y 3 ancho” (“a hen guarding her chicks from three birds of prey close to a house”); see Lopez Navío 1962, no. 211, and Robels 1989, cat. no. V46. Cf. a signed painting by Snyders dated 1646 in Budapest, Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, inv. no. 751; see Robels 1989, cat. no. 208, illus. Koslow 1995, p. 260, suggested that the two pictures, which have the same dimensions, may have served as pendants. 4 See Robels 1989, cat. no. A248; cf. also cat. no. A249. This design was also employed by Pieter Boel, as demonstrated by an etching in his set of six, titled Diversi uccelli, in which the attacking falcons are, however, depicted quite differently. For the print, see Bartsch, IV, p. 201; Hollstein, III, p. 57; repro. The Illus. Bartsch, V, p. 191. Cf. a painting attributed to Boel in the Collection of Philip of Limburg Stirum, Ansegem (Belgium) in 1954; see the photo on file at the RKD, The Hague. 5 Madrid, Museo del Real Acadmia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, inv. no. 562, for which see a photograph on file at the RKD, The Hague. 6 On 31 August 1613, the archdukes issued a “placard sur la chasse” consisting of 116 articles. Article 29 confirms hunting “de poil avec poil et de plume avec plume”, that is to hunt only with dogs and birds, except for the kill, which is accomplished bare handed or with a spear. Nets, bows and arrows, and guns are forbidden in this type of hunt, which in some regions, according to the legislation, is called “noble”. See Faider 1877, for a detailed account of hunting laws; see also Sullivan 1984, pp. 33 ff.; and Koslow 1995, pp. 98, 102. 7 Cf. for example a scene of falconry from a set of Flemish tapestries of Diana Hunting that once belonged to Queen Christina, woven around 1647 after designs by Van der Gucht, now at Drottningholm Palace; for which see Ulf Cederlöf, “Paintings and Tapestries of the Hunt in Swedish Royal Collections”, The Connoisseur 196, Nov. 1977, pp. 254–261, fig. 4. 8 See Henkel and Schöne 1967, col. 785, illus. Leufsta 30 might contain a political allegory referring to the Spanish Governor of the South Netherlands, the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. The Spanish Netherlands had for several years been embroiled in a war against France, on the one hand, and the Dutch Republic, on the other, the outcome of which was still uncertain. In her discussion of David II Teniers’ Heron Hunt of the early 1650s in Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv. no. 1887), depicting a heron defending itself valiantly, in the air and on the ground, against an attack by two hunting falcons, with the Archduke and two companions on horseback in the background, Klinge interpreted the falcons as symbolizing the two attacking enemy states against which the “South Netherlandish” heron must defend itself. See Antwerp 1991, no. 78, illus. [M. Klinge]. 9 See Eduard de Dene’s De warachtige fabulen der dieren, published by Pieter de Clerk at Bruges in 1567 (facs. ed., Roeselare 1978); and Joost van den Vondel’s Vorstelijke Warande der Dieren, published at Amsterdam in 1617 (facs. ed., Soest 1974) 10 Cf. n.3 above. For the Marquis of Leganés as a collector, see Volk 1980; for the 1655 inventory, see López Navío 1962. Twenty paintings listed in the 1655 Leganés inventory are specifically identified as fables scenes (fabula), including one depicting a heron attacked by two falcons (no.

212). See Balis 1985, pp. 262–270, n. 9, 15–17, 21, 26–28, 33–36, 49.[End]