Literature:    Wibiral 11 I-II/VII;

                     Hollstein 11 I-II/VII;

                     Turner (New Hollstein) 10 I-II/VII;

                     Carl Depauw, Anthony van Dyck as a printmaker, exh. cat., Antwerpen Open/Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 1999, cat. no.15.

Very fine and extremely rare earliest impression of either the 1st or the 2nd state of the portrait of the Flemish painter Frans Snyders (head and shoulder), before the rest of the figure, the background and the lettering below (possibly cut if 2nd state). Cut around the image.

Compared to the 2nd state (BM, inv. R,1b.8) our impression shows less lines inside the four bottons of the doublet, suggesting that it is closer to a 1st state, though different from the 1st state of the British Museum (BM, inv. R,1b.7).

We are grateful to Simon Turner for pointing out in an email (08/20/2020) that our print corresponds closer to a 1st state impression which is now at the Harvard Art Museums (inv. 2008.25.11).

From the series for the publication Icones Principum Virorum Doctorum, Pictorum Chalcographorum Statuariorum nec non Amatorum Pictoriae Artis numero centum. Antwerp: Gillis Hendricx, 1645.

Francis Snyder was a still life and animals painter who collaborated with both Rubens and Van Dyck. The present print is based on Van Dyck's portrait of his friend and colleague painted at the end of the 1610s and now in the Frick Collection, New York (inv. 09.1.39), as stated by Van Dyck himself in the inscription of the 2nd state (1).

1. 'Ant. van Dyck pinxit et fecit in aqua forti' (Anthony van Dyck painted this and etched it with acid). Carl Depauw in Anthony van Dyck as a printmaker, exh. cat., Antwerpen Open/Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 1999, p. 142.