Dead Birds and Shot Bags

1650/1660

Attributed to Pieter Boel
Flemish, 1622-1674

Arranged in sinuous poses to emphasize individual feathers and decorative patterns in the plumage, the lifeless birds in this painting demonstrate the artist’s careful attention to reproducing the natural world. Pieter Boel, who specialized in the game still lifes popularized in the Southern Netherlands by Frans Snyders (an example of which is on view in this gallery), executed highly naturalistic representations of fowl and canines during his years in Antwerp. The heightened shadows in this work reflect Boel’s study of Italian painting during a stay there in the 1640s.

Status: On View, Gallery 208
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Pieter Boel
Title: Dead Birds and Shot Bags
Origin: Flanders
Date: 1645–1655
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 12 3/4 × 17 in. (32.6 × 43.3 cm)
Credit Line: A. A. Munger Collection
Reference Number: 1955.747
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Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 167.

The Hague, Oude Kunst uit Haagsch Bezit, December 12, 1936–January 31, 1937, cat. 77.
Oberlin, Ohio, Allen Memorial Art Museum, The Adolph Mayer Collection, long-term loan exhibition beginning in 1948, catalogue published in Allen Memorial Museum Bulletin 5 (January 1948), cat. 3, p. 3 (ill.).

Adolf Mayer, Mannheim and The Hague, by December 1936 [see The Hague 1936 exh. cat., no. 77, and label on reverse of stretcher]; by descent to his sons, Adolf I. Mayer Jr., New York, and H. Herbert Mayer, The Hague [see forward of 1948 Oberlin exh. cat.]; probably offered for sale by Adolf I. Mayer Jr. and H. Herbert Mayer through Van Diemen-Lilienfeld Gallery, New York [see forward of Oberlin 1948 exh. cat. and Van Diemen and Lilienfeld label on reverse of stretcher]; sold by Van Diemen-Lilienfeld Gallery, New York, to the Art Institute, 1955.

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