Still Life with a Hare, a Heron and Other Birds

Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Two strips of paper tape at the edges of the canvas, one covering the other, could indicate an earlier lining. The edges of the picture plane, once folded over a smaller stretcher to serve as tacking edges, were returned to the front when the canvas was transferred onto on a larger stretcher.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends up to the current edges of the canvas. The first layer is a solid red and is followed by a grey layer consisting of carbon black and white pigment. The ground is covered by an imprimatura in the colour of raw umber.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the canvas. The dark background was executed first, leaving a generous reserve for the compositional elements. The composition was built up with smooth and opaque paints, and warm transparent brown glazes for the shadows in the hare. The imprimatura has been left exposed in the area between the upper edge of the heron’s neck and the other birds. The soft texture of the hare’s fur and the individual feathers of the birds were suggested with fine lines created by dragging the still-wet paint with a dry stiff brush, laying bare the underlayer. The edges of the reserve were closed with the paint of the background. Details, such as the feet of the birds, were added last.
Michel van de Laar, 2024

Poor. The adhesion of the lining canvas is problematic at the edges. There are disturbing, old, repaired holes and tears, some of the latter out of plane. Strips of facing paper used during lining have left an imprint in the paint surface. There are unfinished, discoloured retouchings throughout. The paint is abraded locally in the background. The varnish is very discoloured.

…; from the dealer Franz Kleinberger, Paris, fl. 400, to the museum, April 1901

ObjectNumber: SK-A-1951

Elias Vonck’s paintings are generally categorized as game still lifes, a genre that emerged in Flanders in the 1610s, its most notable exponent being Frans Snijders.³³See S. Koslow, Frans Snyders: Stilleven- en dierenschilder, 1579-1657, Brussels 1995, p. 98; A. Chong and W.T. Kloek (eds.), Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Cleveland (The Cleveland Museum of Art) 1999-2000, pp. 137-39, no. 13. However, scenes that combine true game, such as a hare, with a heron and smaller birds had little to do with hunting, and would above all have conjured up an image of fine and expensive consumer items.⁴⁴For the hunting of large and small game see I. Matthey, Vincken moeten vincken locken: Vijf eeuwen vangst van zangvogels en kwartels in Holland, Hilversum 2002, pp. 141, 158. According to Sullivan, finches were regarded as delicacies, which is why they feature so often in still lifes, but aesthetic considerations probably also played a part in Vonck’s choice of specific birds.⁵⁵S.A. Sullivan, The Dutch Gamepiece, Totowa 1984, p. 8. What is particularly striking here is that he depicted some of the most colourful species to be found in the Netherlands: a robin and a finch on the left and a kingfisher in the middle of the table edge. It is unclear how many and which birds are in the heap on the right; there is what seems to be a partridge lying at the bottom. The impasted passages of yellow ochre, green-blue, pink and deep blue form a strong contrast with the otherwise monochrome palette.

Although the lack of dated paintings makes it difficult to follow Vonck’s stylistic development, the Rijksmuseum still life is probably not from the beginning of his career. Early works of the 1640s are smaller in scale and do not have such strong contrasts of light and shade.⁶⁶Still Life of Vegetables and Game, 1640, Warsaw, National Museum, and Kitchen Still Life, 1640, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst; illustrated in S.A. Sullivan, The Dutch Gamepiece, Totowa 1984, figs. 39, 40.

The subject of a hare with a few large and numerous small birds is a recurrent one in the artist’s oeuvre.⁷⁷See, for example, the very comparable Peacock, Rabbit, Partridge, Woodcock and Songbirds on a Draped Table, canvas, 92 x 103.6 cm; sale, London (Bonhams), 23 April 2008, no. 108. Here he was following an older visual tradition that originated in sixteenth-century Flemish market and kitchen pieces. For example, in Joachim Bueckelaer’s 1566 Well-Stocked Kitchen, with Jesus in the House of Martha and Mary in the Background in the Rijksmuseum, there is a string of finches beside a dead hare in the right foreground.⁸⁸See SK-A-1451. There is a longer string of finches in the centre of Bueckelaer’s slightly earlier Kitchen Scene with Christ at Emmaus of 1560-65, The Hague, Mauritshuis. Another example which may be even earlier is found in Pieter Aertsen’s Poultry Market, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum; illustrated in S.A. Sullivan, The Dutch Gamepiece, Totowa 1984, fig. 6. A late-sixteenth-century print by Peeter van der Borcht shows a man at a vegetable market carrying a hare and a bunch of woodpigeons, while a series of hunting scenes after Johannes Stradanus, first published by Philips Galle in Antwerp in 1578, depicts figures with bunches of finches.⁹⁹See H. Mielke and U. Mielke, The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700: Peeter van der Borcht, ed. G. Luijten, Rotterdam 2004, p. 187, no. 177; M. Sellink and M. Leesberg, The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450-1700: Philips Galle, III, ed. M. Leesberg, Rotterdam 2001, nos. 551/1, 554/1. Snijders and later game specialists also employed these motifs on many occasions.

Erlend de Groot, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

S.A. Sullivan, The Dutch Gamepiece, Totowa 1984, p. 25; E. Gemar-Koeltzsch, Holländische Stillebenmaler im 17. Jahrhundert, III, Lingen 1995, pp. 1059-61, no. 420/3

1904, p. 288, no. 2581; 1934, p. 306, no. 2581; 1976, pp. 585-86, no. A 1951

Erlend de Groot, 2024, 'Elias Vonck, Still Life with a Hare, a Heron and Other Birds, c. 1645 - c. 1652', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026899