(Paris 1677–1747 Saint-Germain-en-Laye)
Exotic birds, a peacock with a monkey and dogs in a landscape,
oil on canvas, 127 x 166 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Tajan, Paris, 29 March 2001, lot 41 (as Philipp Ferdinand de Hamilton);
Private collection, Belgium

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for suggesting the attribution of the present painting on the basis of high-resolution photographs. He notes that the peacock and the dog in the middle of the composition re-occur in another work by the artist (see C. Salvi, D’après nature: la nature morte en France au XVIIe siècle, Paris 2000, p. 213).

The present work, with its meticulous handling, from the gleaming tail feathers of the peacock to the lustrous plumage of the parrot and soft fur of the dog beneath, is redolent of the brush work of Antoine Monnoyer. Antoine, son of the Franco-Flemish painter Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1636–1699), worked very much in the tradition of the great Antwerp still life masters of the proceeding generation, and the present work contains motifs used by earlier painters. The barking dog and the monkey originate with Frans Snyders (1579–1657), as may be seen in the Flemish painter’s Market scene with a vendor advertising her fruit and vegetables to a lady client dated 1616–21 conserved in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (inv. no. 1312). The hares also appear to be an Antwerp stock type, according to Fred Meijer, they may be found in another work loosely associated with David de Coninck (1636–1699).

Antoine trained in the Paris workshop of his father, likely accompanying Jean-Baptiste to England, and possibly assisting on the decorations of Montagu House, Bloomsbury, the first site of the British Museum. Snyders’s Market scene with a vendor advertising her fruit and vegetables to a lady client was then in the renowned collection of Sir Robert Walpole, so it is possible that Monnoyer made a study of it during his English sojourn.