Waterfowl and Stoats

In 1794 the men inventorying the Spanish royal collection found this canvas in the New Royal Palace in Madrid, in the small closet off the passage to the Infanta's bedroom, and listed it beside a companion piece of a fox running down a hare. Both went down as Snyders. By the inventory of 1814 the pair had moved to the princes' bedroom, and the clerk there put them under the name of Paul de Vos instead. The canvas is 181 centimetres high and only 79 wide. The Prado catalogue of 1857 got no further than a river, a tree, and various quadrupeds and birds. The museum's record now names a bittern, a waxwing, a duck, an otter, a snake and the ermines of the title, and the signature at the lower left reads F. Snyders.