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Catalogue raisonné: 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]

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