Attributed to Frans Snyders

A concert of birds is a Flemish picture type, birds of many species crowded along branches around an owl holding a sheet of music, popular in Antwerp from the early decades of the 17th century and made popular above all by Frans Snyders, the painter of hunts, larders and animals who worked alongside Rubens. He returned to the idea more than once, and versions by him, by his circle and by his brother-in-law Paul de Vos, another Antwerp animal painter, are spread across European collections.

One version under this name is a large canvas, 203 by 334 centimetres, and the Prado's author line for it reads Atribuido a Snyders, Frans. Attributed to is the firmest of the three formulas a catalogue reaches for when it will not simply print the master's name. It says the museum believes the work is probably by Snyders himself and stops short of certifying it, where follower of would put an unnamed painter in his manner and copy after would make it another hand repeating a known composition. The museum dates the canvas to the middle of the 17th century and does not have it on display.