Frans Snyders Biography | Oil Paintings

Frans Snyders (the painter) or Frans Snijders was a Flemish painter of still lifes, animals, hunting and market scenes. He was one of the earliest animaliers (painting the realistic portrayal of animals) and is credited with starting a wide variety of new still-life and animal subject paintings in Antwerp.

Frans Snyders at the age of fourteen was a student of Pieter Brueghel the Younger in 1593 and later received instruction from Hendrick van Balen. He was a friend of Anthony van Dyck who painted Snyders and his wife on more than one occasion.

Some of Snyders finest works were done after he was appointed principal painter to Archduke Albert of Austria, governor of the Low Countries. One of these paintings, a Stag Hunt was presented to Philip III of Spain, who together with his successor Philip IV of Spain, commissioned the artist to paint several subjects of the hunt.

Snyders traveled to Rome in 1608-9 and then to Milan where Jan Brueghel the Elder had introduced him to the famous art collector Cardinal Borromeo. Brueghel asked Snyders to paint a copy of a portrait by Titian in Cardinal Borromeo's art collection, Snyders was a skilled figure painter before he became a still life painter.

Frans Snyders initially painted flowers and fruit still life, but later changed to painting animals, and became one of the first and finest painters of hunting scenes and combats of wild animals.

He was a regular collaborator with the leading Antwerp painters Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens. Rubens frequently employed him to paint animals, fruit and still life in his own pictures, especially his ability to render different textures of furs and skins. Between 1610 to 1640, Frans Snyders developed a particularly close relationship with Rubens. In the early period of their collaboration, Rubens would paint an oil sketch of the complete composition and mark out clearly where Snyders would have to use his talents, as in the oil painting The Recognition of Philopoemen, also considered the first Baroque still life with figures. In later years the process was reversed and Snyders made a sketch leaving the space for the figure by Rubens, as in Prometheus Bound.

Art Movement: Baroque Art.
Artists Influencing Frans Snyders: Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Hendrick van Balen.
He Traveled To Italy, Spain.
Painters Frans Snyders Influenced: Nicasius Bernaerts, Peter van Boucle, Juriaen Jacobsze, Jan Roos, Paul de Vos, Jan Fyt, Peter van Boucle.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.