Van Dyck was about twenty years old and living in Antwerp when he painted these portraits of the artist Frans Snyders, an established painter of still lifes and animals, and his wife, Margareta de Vos. Margareta was the daughter of a distiller and came from an artistic family; three of her brothers were painters. Van Dyck had collaborated with Snyders—who also worked with Peter Paul Rubens—on a number of projects at the end of the 1610s. The impeccably painted glass vase with flowers in the upper left corner of Margareta’s portrait may be a tribute to Snyders’s talents and livelihood. Elements in both paintings signal the subjects’ affluence, from their dress—including Margareta’s impressive starched millstone collar—to their setting: the two portraits appear to share the same space on a terrace. Indeed, the portraits may commemorate the couple’s purchase of a large house in Antwerp, which still stands today. Among the most striking features is the force of Frans’s expression. He stares coolly, rather haughtily, outward, while his wife offers a more sympathetic look.
The portraits were separated sometime in the late eighteenth century. They were reunited when Henry Clay Frick acquired them for his collection in 1909.
Frans Snyders
Frans Snyders was celebrated for his paintings of animals and still lifes and counted the king of Spain among his clients. At the end of the 1610s, Van Dyck collaborated with Snyders on several paintings, and these joint projects may have led him to sit for this portrait by Van Dyck, who was approximately twenty years old at the time. A likely occasion for the commission of this and the depiction of Snyders’s wife, Margareta de Vos, was the couple’s purchase of a large house on Antwerp’s most prestigious street, which still survives today. The architectural setting of a terrace overlooking parkland evokes the sitters’ status as wealthy patricians, while locating the portraits in a single space.
De Nossé. Duc d’Orléans (mentioned in 1727, inventories of 1752 and 1785). In 1792 the Dutch, Flemish, and German pictures of the Orléans collection were sold by Philippe Égalité for 350,000 francs to T.M. Slade, Chatham. In 1793 the Frick picture was bought, presumably during the London exhibition of the Orléans pictures (Old Academy Rooms, Pall Mall, Wilson catalogue, No. 96) for 400 guineas by the Earl of Carlisle. The Earls of Carlisle. Knoedler. Frick, 1909.
Source: Paintings in The Frick Collection: American, British, Dutch, Flemish and German. Volume I. New York: The Frick Collection, 1968.
