Dead Birds and Shot Bags
Pieter Boel
1655–1665
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 32.6 × 43.3 cm (12 3/4 × 17 in.); Framed: 49.5 × 59.7 × 6.4 cm (19 1/2 × 23 1/2 × 2 1/2 in.)
- Genre
- painting
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Styles
Tags
paintingpaintcanvasoil on canvasbirdoil paint (paint)painting (image making)17th Centurypainting techniquesstill lifegunsoil paintinghuntingeuropean painting
About
Arranged in sinuous poses to emphasize individual feathers and decorative patterns in the plumage, the lifeless birds in this painting demonstrate the artist’s careful attention to reproducing the natural world. Pieter Boel, who specialized in the game still lifes popularized in the Southern Netherlands by Frans Snyders, executed highly naturalistic representations of fowl and canines during his years in Antwerp. The heightened shadows in this work reflect Boel’s study of Italian painting during a stay there in the 1640s.