Jan Fyt

Jan Fyt painted dead things beautifully. His pictures are piled with the spoils of the hunt, a hare hanging by one leg, partridges and a kingfisher, a hound nosing at the game, and he rendered fur, feather and the wet gleam of a bird's eye with a care that made buyers want them on their walls.

He was born in Antwerp in 1611 and learned the trade in the busy studios of the city, finishing under Frans Snyders, then the leading animal painter of Flanders. He spent much of the 1630s abroad, joining the Netherlandish artists working in Rome, and the brighter colour he brought home set his work apart from his teacher's. Fyt's game pieces are the more refined of the two, tuned to aristocratic taste.

Most painters of the time scraped by. Fyt did not. He ran a busy studio in Antwerp until his death in 1661 and grew genuinely rich from paint. His range also took in flower garlands and fish, and he liked to combine them, hanging game and blossom together beneath a swag of flowers.