Frans Snyders

When Peter Paul Rubens needed a snarling dog, a dead boar or a heap of fruit painted better than he could manage himself, he called on Frans Snyders. The two Antwerp masters collaborated often, Snyders adding the animals and still-life passages to Rubens's grand compositions.

On his own Snyders made huge, loud pictures of abundance: market stalls piled with fish and game, larders spilling over, hunts where hounds bring down a stag or a bear. Nobody in Flanders painted the texture of fur, feather and glistening fish quite like him.

He ran a busy workshop and grew wealthy in Antwerp. His hunt and market scenes now hang in museums from Madrid to Saint Petersburg, often beside the Rubens paintings they were made to complete.