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.