Still Life with Fruit, Wan-Li Porcelain, and Squirrel

Snyders signed and dated this at the lower right, Frans Snyders fecit 1616, which makes it one of the fixed points for dating his early still lifes. He painted it on copper rather than on canvas or wood, a smooth support that holds fine detail, and at 84 centimetres across this is a big sheet of metal.

The blue and white bowl in the title is Chinese porcelain of the Wanli period, named for the emperor who was still on the throne in Beijing when Snyders painted it, so the dish on this table was current ware from China, not an antique. With it come fruit and a squirrel.

The picture's history begins in Germany, in the collection of the princes of Schaumburg-Lippe. It was sold in Brussels in 1929, passed through Lucerne and a Belgian collection, and in 1970 the London dealer Edward Speelman sold it to Robert H. Smith, a collector in Arlington, Virginia. Smith sold it to the museum in 1993.